A Serpent in the Citadel
by Galvane
Summary: A cynical ex-Alliance marine, Corrigan Blake, finds himself hip-deep in the search for an admiral's missing daughter. The trail leads to some of the shadiest places on the Citadel populated by some of the unfriendliest people. And those are the people that he needs to get to help him. A noir detective story set a few years before the events of the games, with original characters.
1. Chapter 1: The Big Sister

The last time I was this hungover while being escorted through a military facility I was looking at ten years in a prison colony. Lucky for me I wasn't wearing tin bracelets this time and no one had their gun drawn. Unlucky for me I was being marched to the Alliance Judge Advocate Corps office on Arcturus Station, the giant place where the most muckety of the mucks who ran the entire Systems Alliance Navy called home. I was krill in the mouth of humanity's whale, and that wasn't even the worst part.

The worst thing was, I was being escorted to my sister. Yes, I, Corrigan Blake, ex-Marine, former mercenary, galactic traveler, feared nothing in the universe half so much as I did my big sister.

We walked down the corridors faster than I prefer, passed by a constant stream of Alliance Navy functionaries trying to look busy in case an admiral was around. The hunk of metal we were in looked like every other Alliance facility I'd ever been to: white where it wasn't metal, angular, and boring as a doctor's waiting room. The only difference was this place was cleaner and had a lot more brass around, especially on the lapels. All the uniforms made me nervous, like they'd shanghai me any minute and I'd end up getting yelled at by some sergeant for not running fast enough. The thought did my pounding head and gurgling stomach no good.

Unfortunately they didn't enlist me. Instead my meaty Marine escort took me into the offices of the AJACs, down a couple hallways, and deposited me on a couch in front of my sister's closed office door. The grunt looked at me and said, "Is there anything I can get for you while you wait, sir?" Him sirring me, when he outranked me plenty the last time I'd worn that get-up. He must have been on Arcturus a while, since he was able to keep his lip from curling into a sneer as he said it.

"Sure, buddy," I said, giving him my best morning-after smile. "How about a comfier couch, on, say, Omega?" He nodded, considered himself answered, and left my sorry ass there without a second's thought. _Cruel bastard,_ I thought, looking at my sister's brass nameplate.

I smoked a cigarette as I waited. It was a salarian blend and oddly fruity, but I persevered through the taste since I didn't have much choice. Humanity did the galaxy a favor by introducing them to tobacco, and the daffy aliens turned around and made it taste like something other than a six-day old ashtray. It was a good thing we were here to straighten things out. It didn't help my hangover but it gave me something to do. Just before I finished, the doorway to my own personal hell opened and a pleasant electronic voice said, "Commander Blake will see you now." I knew that was the last pleasant voice I'd hear for a while. I stubbed the cigarette out on the bottom of my boot and dropped it into a plant as I walked to the door. I felt like a Marine charging a nest without an assault rifle.

Madeleine Blake's office looked like a reflection of herself: organized, clean, and heartless. The only spot of color was a single red rose in a white vase. Her back was to me, so all I could see of her was short brown hair and the double stripe of rank on the shoulders of her navy blue uniform. I stood inside the doorway for a while as she moved some digital papers around on the orange screen behind her desk, doing busy work because she knew it would irritate me. I surveyed the few pictures she had around and grinned to see that she couldn't help but have one of me up. I then grimaced when I saw it was from right out of boot camp with me looking like a shorn sheep.

I couldn't take the silence as I moved towards the open seat. "Heya sis," I said, settling into the white-and-metal (what else?) chair. "How're the kids?"

"I don't have any," she answered without turning around. "I'm also not married, before you ask. Of course," she said as she spun her chair around to face me, "if you ever read any of your messages or made the occasional call, you would know all of that."

I shrugged and waved my hand to the side. "I hate spoiling the surprise. You look good." She did. Lucky for her she got all the looks in the family, along with the brains, charm, manners, and ambition. The only thing I got was the testicles. She looked young, clear-eyed, fresh, and ready to tell a bunch of people what to do. Sadly I was the only one around.

Her eyes flicked up and down my sorry carcass. "Thanks. You look like something the cat refused to drag in."

"Hey," I said. "This shirt was clean a few days ago. I don't have a bunch of enlisted folks to do my laundry."

Brown eyes rolled. "If you think that's true, you've forgotten what Navy life is like."

"And I'm thankful for that every day."

A few taps of her fingers on the hologramatic keyboard at her left hand pulled up a glowing orange document that spun lazily towards me. "This'll fix that. An order reinstating you at your former rank. Emergency conscription to fill a dire need for your area of expertise. I imagine there is a clogged latrine somewhere needing attention." I could see it already had my information on it. It was even signed by an admiral. Assault rifle? I need a grenade. Or a Grizzly.

I rubbed my forehead. "Thanks sis. My headache needed a twin."

She flicked the document away. "My god," she said, "you're hungover. You have to be the only idiot in the galaxy dumb enough to have one. The cure is cheaper than a drink and easier to get."

"I know. It's too easy. If I took it there'd be nothing to stop me from drinking."

She shook her head and turned her left wrist towards her. Her military-grade omni-tool glowed brightly as she tapped on it. My crappy civilian-grade one flickered to life duller than a politician's wit. She linked to mine and with a faint hiss the drug spun through my system. The pounding went away before I could be thankful for it. _Heartless?_ I thought. _Clearly she's a different person now._

"I've got something to keep you from drinking. A job."

 _Nevermind._

I shifted in my seat. "A job, eh? I'm between those at the moment. It's hard work keeping it that way."

"I know. It's the only hard work you've ever done."

"And the only work I've been proud of."

She sighed, but didn't look surprised. "It was more than I could hope." She tapped her keyboard then dragged some lights around. This time I couldn't see what it was – they must have been classified in some way. "So where've you been? Last I heard you were on some backhills colony pushing dirt. Tiptree, right?" She had decided to open a new front. My sister was military to the core.

I grunted my affirmative grunt. "Yeah. I went looking for peace and quiet."

"Why'd you leave?"

"Too quiet." I shifted in my chair and fished out the lousy salarian cigarettes. "Mind if I – "

"Yes, I mind. It's disgusting."

"C'mon. It's not like the whole cancer and emphysema thing is an issue anymore. Even the krogans are doing it."

"Being a krogan would be a step up for you. Where'd you go after that? Earth?"

I nodded as I put the pack back into my jacket. No point denying it, since she probably knew anyway. Like every lawyer, my sister only asked questions she already knew the answer to. "Yep. Lovely Las Angela-Vegas. Looked up some old friends there." I knew that bothered her. We'd grown up in that megatropolis, in not-so-great circumstances, and were both lucky to get out with our hides intact and criminal records clean. Going back always meant bad news. Sometimes it had to be done.

"Old friends." Her tone was flatter than my wallet. "Leave in a hurry?"

She knew, all right. "Sure. Made a bad bet on zero-G football. Roof Attack let me down. Had to skip before Big Linda tracked me down."

I got my sister to snort. "You're too cheap to bet anything but your skin and your pride. It's amazing you have either. How's Big Lin?" Big Linda was kind of a second mother to us, keeping an eye out when we were kids and our mom was working late. She ran a little diner and had as much to do with books as a vorcha.

"She's good. She says hi." I dusted my brown trousers. "She had a bit of trouble with some folks. She's OK now."

Madeleine nodded. Her dropping the subject told me she knew all the details, probably more than me. "Where are you heading to now?"

"You mean before I got yanked off the boat by uniformed heavies asking by name as soon as we jumped to Arcturus?" I gave her some time but she didn't have the decency to look guilty. She never did. "I dunno. Maybe Illium."

"Illium." Just like that, I was vetoed. I was a grown man, not that it mattered. "Why not the Citadel? If Tiptree was too quiet and home was, well, Earth, why not try the hub of the galaxy?"

"Moonlighting for the travel board now?" Truth be told, I'd been considering it, but now I couldn't let that on. I gave in. Even if I could win on this attack she'd just send the cavalry to outflank me. I didn't want to know what that would be. "OK, sis," I said, looking up at the ceiling, "what's the job?"

Tap tap tap. "There is a sensitive case ongoing. I need someone to interview a former garrison Marine about something he saw a couple years ago."

I looked skeptical. "You mean with all those Alliance people running all over the Citadel, you can't find one who can talk to a guy?"

She looked like she was playing poker. "This man probably won't talk to active military personnel. I think he'll talk to you."

"Oh, yeah, you know how people open up to me. I must've been a priest in a past life. Folks see me and just start confessing."

That got me a big smile, the main one she used, a professional, friendly, and polite way to show her teeth and remind everyone just how bad she could bite. "In this case, I think you'll be alright. He's recalcitrant, insubordinate, shifty, and irresponsible. You're the big brother he never had."

I didn't mention what that made her, as my big sister. "Maybe. What's it pay?"

Her smile dropped like a rock in a lake. "One hundred credits a day, plus travel and related expenses. _Reasonable_ expenses, Corrigan." She put so much stress on the _reasonable_ it had an ulcer.

I whistled. "The Navy is still as cheap as I left it. If you're appealing to my large and well-known avaricious side, that's not going to do it."

"I assumed." She tapped a bit on her keyboard, and a screen appeared in the air in front of me. It was a file with no official Alliance markings on it but had the same overall feel. Despite myself I sat up and took notice. "There's another job. Unofficial. A retired Alliance admiral has a missing daughter. He's putting up a hundred thousand credits to the person or group that brings her back." I flipped around in the file and came across a vid showing the daughter. Mid-twenties and pretty, with blonde hair and green eyes. Either she had the rarest of traits nowadays or a good colorist. She had a strong jawline and high cheekbones, and no doubt plenty of admirers. The file named her Lorelei.

"A hundred grand and a pretty girl? You should have led with that."

"You'd have been too preoccupied looking for the hook to swallow that fish." She knew me well.

I flipped around a little more, but there was too much detail for me to care about yet. "OK, what's the story?"

"I never did get around to teaching you how to read." She took control of the screen and popped up a still of a grey-haired rock-faced man I knew I could never get along with. "Admiral Desmond York. Decorated, well-respected, the whole nine. Old friend of Admiral Grissom himself."

I humphed. Grissom was the man humanity sent through a mass relay blind for the first time, becoming the face of the Alliance, and led our first interstellar war, against the turians. The man had space stations named after him. A friend of his would have powerful allies. "So he's got plenty of pull still. It's not a criminal matter then, or else the law would handle it. His daughter Lorelei split and she's old enough to get away with it, but the old man doesn't like it, because she's either mixed up in something he doesn't like or is refusing to do what he wants her to do."

My sister nodded her assent. "Basically. She's on the Citadel but dark. There are a couple of leads, but C-Sec won't touch it since they've seen no evidence of a crime and the military can't officially do anything since it doesn't involve military personnel."

Madeleine was always very careful with her words. "C-Sec's seen no evidence, huh? What's the evidence?"

"Complicated." The screen flashed a different picture, this one of a young man, handsome, clean-cut, a jaw that could chew gravel and the posture of a statue. "This is Cole Montgomery. Sort of York's protégé and son he never had. He's the son of an officer who served under the admiral and died on Mindoir." Mindoir was bad news. Almost the whole colony got killed or enslaved ten years ago during a batarian raid while the Alliance defense was pinned down and helpless. "York took the rest of the family under his wing. Top of his class in every class. A born officer. He's due to start classes at the Alliance Naval Academy in a month. He's considered one of the most promising candidates the Navy has seen. They're already whispering that this kid could be the first human Spectre."

I hated him already. I knew the Alliance was itching to get one of their own as part of the Galactic Council's special forces branch, but the Council races didn't seem to be in a rush to do anything about it. "Swell. Sounds like quite a guy."

"Yeah, he'd hate you too. Anyway, Cole and Lorelei grew up together. Witnesses all say they were close. A few indicated that their relationship went beyond childhood chums. They also left Eden Prime on the same day. C-Sec managed to get a hit on Lorelei's ID when she arrived on the Citadel three days ago, but nothing on Cole. The assumption is he used fake identification."

"OK. All that is nice. I'm still waiting on the evidence. Unless you want me to bust him for underage drinking."

Her teeth flashed at me again in her predatory way. "Getting to it. Lorelei's a biotic. Dad had enough pull to keep her from being 'recruited' to attend Gagarin Station." We both knew a couple of people who went through the biotic training academy. It was rough. Kids died there, and in some cases they were the lucky ones. "Instead she went to Illium for a while, trained with some asari. Pricey, but the admiral made quite a few connections that he leveraged when he retired. He owns a big stake in galactic shipping interests. Money isn't much of an issue for him. His daughter's been getting involved in politics, movements, things like that. An ambassadorship down the road seems likely."

"So the kids have prospects, are going places, and run off to the Citadel, and Daddy doesn't like it. Still waiting for the crime."

Madeleine paused for a second. I knew what she was about to tell me would get her squashed if it got out. She was entrusting me with her career and more. "The last place Lorelei and Cole were seen on Eden Prime was a sitting room in the Admiral's mansion. After they disappeared, a search turned up a small rolled-up leather case. Inside were four vials of red sand and another two of Minagen X3. Plus a few empty vials."

That got another whistle. Both were serious drugs that meant a lot of trouble. Red sand gave a user a sense of euphoria and temporary biotic abilities. Minagen X3 made an existing biotic's abilities more powerful the more they took, and too much was relative and lethal. "And no clues as to which it belonged to." This was going to be complicated, sensitive, and dangerous. Three things I liked to avoid at all costs. "How do I figure in?"

"I need an independent agent, unaffiliated with the Alliance. Your official job will be the interview with the marine. I want you to find the girl and get her home. Cole will be a nice-to-have, but the admiral is adamant about his daughter."

She definitely needed a real professional. "OK. Then why me?"

She clicked a few buttons. "You trained as a Marine. Certified proficiencies in assault rifles, pistols, and combat hardsuits. Hostile environment assault trained. Decorated for heroism for actions during the Skyllian Blitz. High scores in adaptability, cognitive processing, and expedient decision-making."

"Wow," I said. "I'd hire me with that resume. Only thing you left off was my high scores in drunk-and-disorderly, gross insubordination, and arrestability, plus my Alliance record of being promoted to Corporal 8 separate times." I leaned forward and rested my elbows on my knees. "Seriously, Madeleine. Why me?"

She didn't hesitate for a second, bless her. "I need someone I can trust."

She had a knack. Find a weak point and jab it. I hemmed and hawed for a bit and she let me, since she was a gracious winner once she knew she'd won. "OK," I said finally. "I'll do it."

My omni-tool flickered dully to life again as she worked on hers, occasionally switching to the terminal on the desk and the other one behind it. "Thank you, Corrigan," she said as she busied herself. My omni-tool died suddenly and I figured that was it – the thing was old and barely worked, and my hopes got raised that I'd get a military-grade replacement. No luck, as my left forearm started glowing again. I was surprised to see how bright it was. Madeleine must have caught the look. "You really should install an update once in a while. No wonder you don't call anyone or read your messages. I'm surprised you could get it to work at all."

"Terms and conditions give me hives. It still played solitaire."

"You're lucky it didn't overheat and burn half your arm off. It's updated now. Maybe you could use it to give a call to Mom sometime."

I snorted at her. "Why bother, when I get all the guilt I need from you?"

"When you vanish for a year, you deserve it. I also cleaned out some of your old files which should help. I hope you aren't going to miss the seventeen-hundred hours of asari exercise videos you had on there."

"Well, there goes my training regimen. I was going to start dancing at Afterlife."

"With your education I doubt you'd qualify." It looked like she was done playing techno-whiz. "OK, you're all set. The relevant files are installed. I've set up your independent agency credentials with both the Alliance and the Citadel. Business licenses are paid for and updated, giving you travel documents for Alliance colonies and anywhere under Citadel authority. I renewed your driver's license, updated your address, and fixed your voter registration. Oh, and you'll probably get summoned for jury duty in the next few months." Such a sweetheart, my sister.

She went on. "Your apartment is on Tayseri Ward, paid through the week. It's reasonable but modest, if you decide you want to keep it for a while. I've also registered your firearm and set up your permit."

"I don't have a gun." She reached into a drawer and set a pistol on the table. "Striker, huh? I thought the Kessler was still Alliance standard issue."

"It is. That's why you don't have one."

"Disavowed already, huh? What happens if C-Sec gets suspicious about me and hauls me in and I crack under the strain? It'll look bad for you."

She shrugged. "Don't get questioned by C-Sec."

"I'm investigating a red sand operation in their backyard. Your fingerprints are all over this. The Alliance may get drawn in and you'll be out on a wire."

Madeleine looked scandalized. "My fingerprints? An investigation will show that the data transfer, funds acquisitions, travel arrangements, license procurements, everything, was all done through a sophisticated hacking tool initiated from your omni-tool after you gained access to an Alliance facility by using my connection."

"Cute. Except I don't have any hacking tools."

"Of course you do. It's the first thing I installed."

"You're a gem, sis. Doing life on some barren colony breaking rocks would at least get me out of jury duty."

She dismissed my future in prison with a wave. "So don't get caught. I'm doing you a favor. You lack incentives in your life. Oh, and you also stole a prototype omni app that integrates with your kinetic barrier and lets you use the tool as a bludgeon, which given your way with people you'll probably need."

Kinetic barriers were good for not getting killed. "I'm not in the navy anymore. I don't have shields."

She pointed to my right. There was a metal case sitting on a table that looked like it was waiting to be handcuffed to my wrist. "There's a light suit in there. It's not heavily armored but it'll give you a barrier. Some protection, but not a lot. Try very hard not to get shot."

"That's what I tell myself every morning in the mirror."

"That's surprising, given your mouth. Anyway, you're all set."

"That's it?" I said. "You give me a gun, a shield, some paperwork, a picture, and a future appointment with a jury one way or another, and send me to the Citadel?"

"Basically. You do have one lead. Extranet searches from the Admiral's villa and some cross-references with C-Sec investigations point to a bar called Tranquility on Tayseri Ward as a likely contact point for one of them. C-Sec has checked a possible red sand operation's connection to the place but has come up empty so far. It's a good place to start."

Things were looking up. I'd need a visit to a bar after this. I could picture the asari dancers already. "Well, thanks, sis. I get to do you a favor and risk either death at the hands of drug dealers or prison for stealing from the Alliance. Or both. Remind me to make it 10 years before I get found again."

"You're welcome. Have fun. Your pay for the week has been advanced to you. A freighter has a berth waiting and leaves in sixteen minutes. Your gear has already been transferred over. Use the encrypted message drop for expenses. Call Mom before you get there. You'll have time."

"Aye-aye sir. Need me to polish your brass before I go?"

She flashed her smug victor's smile. "Unnecessary. That's what junior officers are for." She paused, then added, "Be careful, Corrigan."

"I will." I stood up, dismissed. I picked up the case and attached the pistol to a mag-clip on my belt. I turned to the door and said over my shoulder. "Oh, and I also expect an invite to your wedding."

That caught her off guard. "Wedding? My wedding?" She was almost smooth about it, but I caught the hitch in her voice.

I turned back around. "Sure. There's a rose on your desk, red, that you didn't buy yourself because you don't buy flowers. Whoever gave it to you was important enough for you to display it in your office, which is otherwise impersonal. Except, of course, for your pictures. Four of them. One each of your mother, father, and brother, all facing the door. The last picture faces you." I picked it up and nodded. "Not family, not yet anyway. She looks nice." As I put it back I gestured towards her hands. "On the third finger of your left hand there is a small impression of a ring, indicating you always wear it but aren't right now. My guess is you'll be hitched in three months or less."

I could tell by her face that she was impressed and trying hard to not let it show. I turned away and started heading out. I stopped at the door. "Besides, Mom told me last week."


	2. Chapter 2: Long Walks and Short Thoughts

It took me longer to get to my apartment once I was on the Citadel than it did to travel the millions of miles from Arcturus to the giant station. Customs was no problem. A scan of my new agent license made them ignore my firearm and I got waved in like I was reputable. Citadel security was slipping. Past security was the no-man's-land between the Presidium and the Wards. The Presidium was where the people who were a big deal hung out, diplomats and councilors and their hangers-on. The five Wards jutted off the central ring of the Presidium and was where the real action was. Each was a city unto themselves, full of noise and light and the crammed masses of a half-dozen species gawking and wandering. The place was a great equalizer among all us aliens - none of us built it, we were all in awe of it, and being there instantly made every visitor a tourist for at least a little while.

I decided to walk a lot of the way down the long arm of Tayseri Ward, packed in among the milling masses. I could have flagged a shuttle or a ground car, but something about the crazy bustle of the crowd appealed to me. It reminded me of home, the sprawling slum on Earth, only Tayseri was a lot cleaner and I didn't get mugged every fifth step. There was a buzz to the Citadel, something I could appreciate. Quiet places got to me after a while. Elysium was quiet until the Blitz. Now quiet just meant I was waiting for the explosions and screams.

Being on one of the long glass-enclosed walkways that lined the Wards was anything but quiet. I was surrounded by the babbling of a thousand voices, some human, most not, all talking about events or people I didn't know. There were plenty of turians, the vaguely avian bipeds that were the backbone of Citadel security and military authority, both as security buzzing around and tourists just like me. They all had the authoritative mask of killjoys, but I knew part of it was the hard mask of cartilage that covered their faces, usually tattooed or painted. Of course, the other part of it was that turians tended to be authoritarian killjoys.

There were a lot of the fast-talking salarians as well. Their metabolic rate was a lot faster than anyone else's and they talked like it. Asking a salarian for directions would lead to an examination of the concept of self and its relation to the outside, an exploration of the arbitrariness of the designations of up and down in a society surrounded by the weightlessness of space, a snippet of song from a musical that played with those elements, and a request for a repeat of the inquiry. It was a good thing they were tall and skinny and had huge eyes in relatively small heads, because if they looked more threatening a lot of them would end up punched in the face. They did tend to know a lot about what was going on everywhere and were curious at a level that waved as it went past the point of nosy and went way beyond. Giving one your name meant they'd start a file on you. No surprise they were the espionage and information experts the Galactic Council relied on.

If the turians were the muscle and salarians the brains of the Council, the asari were the heart, soul, supple limbs, soft lips, and graceful movements. It was easy to get carried away when talking about them. They were the oldest civilization currently running and the ones that found the Citadel a couple thousand years ago. They were single-sex but looked an awful lot like human females. Really attractive ones, too, despite the blue or purple skin and wavy cartilage that formed a crest on their heads instead of hair. Since they could reproduce with any species or sex they were the object of a lot of fantasies, and the fact that they found dancing an expression of art and were often found in clubs of a certain sort in skin-tight clothes and moving with a smoothness that caught the eye - like I said, easy to get carried away. They were also often powerful biotics, the deadliest commandos, and the wisest councillors in the galaxy, sometimes all in the same lifespan since they lived so long. While most of the races tended to travel in packs, the asari were sort of sprinkled everywhere. They seemed the most at home.

Those three, the Council races, made up the bulk of the crowd. There were plenty of humans, the up-and-comers, as well. Occasionally I saw a krogan lumbering through like a shark and bull's disreputable lovechild, a hulking mass of muscle and ill-temper and the favorite choice for bodyguards and mercenaries. They got a wide berth, but not as wide as the rare quarians allowed on the Citadel. They were a migrant race, travelling the stars in a fleet of ships after they lost their homeworld and colonies to robots. They'd built them and used them as workers until the synthetics, called the geth, got independently smart, which was a big galactic no-no. Now quarians wandered around getting moved along like refugees no one wanted, because that's exactly what they were. There was something tragic about the quarians that fascinated me, but most people treated them like thieves and made sure they didn't get close.

Mixed in the crowd were also the hanar, floating jellyfish that talked a lot about the Protheans, their so-called Enkindlers, and would give a sermon about them if given half a chance. I had once and so now gave them no chance at all. Sometimes they'd be accompanied by a drell, a bipedal snake-like species that were the most polite snipers and assassins one could hope to meet. I hoped not to. Isolated groups of batarians were also around, but not much. The four-eyed outrage addicts were self-imposed outlaws now, in trouble with the Council for the Skyllian Blitz and general slaving and black-market dealings. Most of the conversations I'd had with batarians had been exchanged via assault rifle fire and that was usually how I preferred it.

I passed my way through the crowd peacefully for a change. The worst thing that happened to me was getting stuck behind a group of elcor, four-legged massive aliens that moved slow and talked slow and took forever to get around. It was fine because it gave me a chance to look around at everything around me. Outside the walkway flying cars shot past, taking people between the wards or just for a joyride. Below was a mass of ground vehicles, generally self-driving ones, doing the same. Vid screens were everywhere, showing news or brightly-flashing advertisements for all kinds of things, from the latest Blasto movie to luxury vacations on Illium to salarian skin moisturizers. I passed every kind of restaurant, casino, shop, and club imaginable. Ignoring a shuttle for the stroll helped me get a feel for where I'd be working.

Walking also gave me time to think. Finding two people on the Citadel who didn't want to be found was a fool's errand. Lucky my sister knew the prime fool to send on her errand. I chewed on what Madeleine said and didn't say, looking for angles. The Admiral had a reward for the return of his daughter, but not for the boy. The way I figured, the old man must have assumed one of four things: one, they ran off together in some dramatic declaration of love, in which case the Admiral would be pissed at Cole for absconding with his daughter and so wouldn't care if the kid went back; two, the young cadet-to-be was in trouble and Lorelei went after him, and if that were true Pops would definitely not care to have him back; or three, the girl was in trouble and our hero Cole Montgomery had gone AWOL to save her, which meant York didn't need to post a reward for him since he would either bring the daughter back home or call for help if he couldn't; or four, which was they were both in it deep and ran off together, and in that case the old war hero would still see no point in paying for the boy's return. So basically, at no point would paying a reward for Cole be worth it to the old man.

I wasn't getting anywhere with that so I thought about the drugs for a while. Red sand was a big deal for non-biotics, but less so for those who could already move things by thinking about it. That didn't mean biotics didn't do it, but it pointed away from them. X3 was a real big deal for biotics, but less so for those who weren't. One thing I didn't know was how they interacted together, if they fed off each other or something along those lines. The presence of both muddied the waters. I'd have felt a lot better if it was just one, since it would indicate who the user was. That left me thinking that it was very possibly both. If the drugs had hooks in both of them, that could explain why they disappeared together. It wouldn't be the first time a rich kid chased a high.

That line of thought led nowhere as well. Too many unknowns. My thoughts turned to how they got off-world and on the Citadel. Plenty of ships left Elysium, humanity's biggest colony, and not everyone was scrupulous about thoroughly vetting their passengers. Lorelei's ID pinged with customs when she got here, then nothing else, so either Cole had fake ID or never arrived. After that, there was no trace of the girl, which either meant she got her own false papers after she got here or she was using hard currency instead of credits. Cash in hand left no electronic trace, and exchanging them was easy. I'd made a few untoward purchases in my time that way. No matter what, either daddy's little girl had a stash of bills or an account in a false name, and in both cases I was left without options for tracking the money.

Long story short, I wasted my time thinking but got a long walk in.

My apartment was near the end of the arm of Tayseri. In the Wards, the farther away from the central ring you got, the less savory it became. C-Sec patrols got less frequent, the clothes a little shabbier, and the alleys a little darker. It was still the same pristine architecture everywhere, pretty much, since the keepers saw to that. The big green aphids wandered around doing maintenance and cleaning up and occasionally rearranging furniture without a word, like butlers with dementia and eight legs. The streets were less crowded, too. Most of the tourists stayed as close to the Presidium as they could afford, and those of us at the ends of the arms weren't here for the ambiance. Black markets, shady deals, and strongarming were the main attractions, besides the nightlife. Danger made the bars and clubs a little more interesting.

My apartment was in a towering high-rise, which meant I had to go into an airlock to get in. There was a layer of atmosphere above everything in the Citadel, but the skyscrapers often extended above that and needed to be sealed against the vacuum of space. That meant cracking a window for a breeze was a bad idea. I reached my level – four – after an interminable time in the elevator and wandered down a gleaming white hallway that still managed to be vaguely disreputable. I confirmed my identity to the door with my omni-tool and then was asked for voice ident. I wondered how that would work, since I'd just gotten here, but I remembered that my sister was involved so just said my name. The door slid open and I looked at my new temporary home.

It had all the charm of an accountant. All the things were there – bed, desk, chair, kitchen, bathroom, couch, vid screen – with the personalization of a completed checklist. I dropped my gear – remarkably little, considering it was everything I owned – in the hall and explored my one-bedroom paradise. It held one pleasant surprise. On a table at the end of the couch was a decanter and a glass already holding two fingers of brown liquid. I sniffed the hooch and sipped it, savoring the mellow burn of a good Earth scotch. The salarians made something that was called scotch and was as good as their cigarettes, and the volus stuff was even worse. I picked up the folded-over note next to the bottle and read the three words:

With compliments. – _Madeleine_

I tried not to think about how she got a handwritten note here before I did as I sipped my drink. Nothing involving her surprised me, except the fact that she was still just a Commander. Me not getting promoted in the Alliance was one thing, although to be fair I got promoted regularly then got busted back down shortly afterwards, but Madeleine was good. Smart, tough, and capable. The Alliance was better than most at recognizing talent and taking care of it regardless of family name or pedigree, but my sister hadn't been promoted in five years. Part of me thought it was karmic justice for her impersonal adherence to Alliance doctrine, but it still didn't feel right. She never complained about it, though, and seemed to love her work in AJACs, so I let it go. I had more pressing thoughts to go nowhere with anyway.

I needed information, and on the Citadel there were plenty of people willing to sell or exchange it. Information brokers were big business. Some were legends, like the Shadow Broker, people who had eyes and ears everywhere and trafficked in secrets that could shake empires. Some were overblown neighborhood gossips. The service was pricey, though. I wondered if the Admiral was using one right now to get a bead on his daughter. He could certainly afford it, although he might want to keep the whole affair under wraps, and contacting a broker for information was a surefire way to give them something new to sell, in this case that a certain Admiral had a missing daughter and might be involved in drugs. Secrecy could be bought as well, but relying on a broker to keep a secret was like trusting a krogan to babysit. If the Admiral did hire one, there could be others out there on the trail. I wouldn't have any way of knowing unless I ran into one. Something else to complicate things.

The ruminations were outpacing the scotch. I took my standard approach to complex situations, which was stop thinking and just do something. Either the problem got solved or I got arrested, but it beat giving myself a headache. I finished the scotch and put on the suit Madeleine gave me. It was tight but fit under my clothes well enough, and I knew it could stop a few rounds that might come my way. I put on some fairly non-descript clothes, black durable workpants tucked into my boots, a shirt that was mostly still white, and my dark jacket on top. I debated leaving the pistol since I was just asking some questions, but at the last minute grabbed it because questions were a thing people in this area of the wards often objected to. I drained the glass and left the apartment, heading for the bar and my only slim lead.


	3. Chapter 3: Time for a Drink

The bar was called Tranquility but Surly would've described it better. I'd envisioned asari dancing girls and a lively crowd of villainy, but the place wasn't a wretched hive. It was barely a disheveled nest. The place wasn't small, with tables and secluded booths in a large open area that looked like it could seat a hundred with more on the spacious elevated dance floor. It was, however, nearly empty. There was an asari but she wasn't dancing. Instead she wiped a spot on the bar with a towel and seemed intent about it. A krogan sat on the right side of the bar, in heavy armor that looked beat to hell and halfway back, nursing a drink. On the left was a lone turian, female, dressed like a merc looking to get in a company. Ragged was too kind a term. A quartet of salarians sat at one table and a pair of quarians were at another, their environmental suits dusty and worn. The bar was quiet, except for a vague electronic dance tune that sounded like it was on a loop and the whispered conversations from the tables that stopped when I got there.

I'd planned to be inconspicuous and blend in, and when everyone looked at me I definitely didn't. It didn't stop me from walking in anyway, like this was exactly what I was looking for. I stood at the bar, halfway between the krogan and turian, in front of the bartender. She didn't look up from the towel. Whatever she was wiping, it was stubborn. After a few seconds I said, "Can I get a drink? No rush."

"Sure. You're in a bar." Most asari had voices like silk dancing in a zephyr. Hers was more broken glass in an ashtray. She didn't look up from the rag.

"Good. I wasn't sure. How about a whiskey? Human, if you have it."

She froze solid then, except for her eyes, which drifted over to me like she expected me to be gone by the time they got there. Her look was flatter than a sailor's wallet after shore leave. After a while they flicked over to my left. "There's a terminal right there." The invisible spot riveted her attention once more.

The turian to my left snorted her amusement. I didn't tell her that on Earth only a constipated pig made that sound. I wasn't here to cause trouble. It just happened to frequently show up as my wingman. I punched through the menu on the terminal's screen and ordered a colonial bourbon from Elysium and waved my bank card at the terminal to pay. Ten credits wasn't cheap, but it beat vorchan beer.

The bartender stirred. "Bourbon? You should've just said." She poured the drink like it owed her money, all distaste and contempt, and plunked it in front of me before she and her rag attacked a new area of the bar. I took my drink and sat at a table, turian snickers and krogan chuckles following me. Ignoring them was easy because getting hit in the face didn't crack my hundred favorite things. The bourbon gave me something to do while I explored my options. When I was done a few seconds later I studied the quarians. On my first colonial posting as a Marine, I found a stash of books left behind by the last bored sucker stationed there. It took me a week before I started on _My Flotilla, My Passion._ I finished the whole stack of novels in a couple of days and ordered the rest of the quarian romance series to be delivered to me. The stack of books sat in my duffel back at the apartment. I just happened to be moved by the tales of their plight as poor wanderers in an uncaring galaxy.

Unfortunately it didn't form much of a basis to start a conversation. I finished my drink and headed back to the bar. That made the turian laugh again. I looked over at her. A fight was rapidly becoming an option. She was looking back like she agreed. There was a nasty scar on her forehead and she was happily showing me the sharp teeth around her mandibles. She had no markings or tattoos on her face, which was a little surprising. In turian society that meant you were "bare-faced", a synonym for untrustworthy, and was a pretty rare thing. I felt my mouth open and heard it offer, "I didn't catch the joke."

She did the turian equivalent of a sneer. "If you don't know who the butt of a joke is, it's probably you." The talons on her fingers clicked on the bar. Turians were tough, with teeth and claws, and they were light and quick. I was probably stronger, especially after the Alliance played with my genes to make me all I could be, increasing my muscle mass and endurance. Part of my brain was telling me a show of toughness might earn me respect. Another part suggested that getting my ass kicked would not. A different part just wanted to punch some frustration onto someone else.

Democracy won out. I squared my body towards hers. "I have a joke. How many turians does it take to hold a human colony?"

I didn't need to finish the joke. The turians took Shanxi, one of ours, and started the First Contact War. Humanity's counterattack destroyed their force easily. It wasn't much of a joke, but it did its job. She pushed off her stool and it slid back abruptly. Our faces were inches apart. She was a little taller than me so I had to look up at her close-set predator's eyes. The thought crossed my mind that I might need to remember how to activate that bludgeon on my omni-tool. I studied her face and noticed something interesting. Before I could mention it she snarled, "Kreeg. Pound this varren-kisser into the dirt and toss it out."

I heard the krogan's stool creak as he stood up behind me. I said, "Kreeg. 50 credits for you to finish your drink." I heard the krogan's stool creak as he settled back into it. Our eyes were still locked. "Well, you gonna kiss me? I'd prefer you buy me a drink first."

She moved fast, a shove with her left arm to open space between us as she drew her right hand back to slash at my face. I lifted my left fist to block her attack and prepared a punch with my right. We froze just like that and stayed there for a few seconds. My skin tingled a bit from the biotic force that was keeping us immobile. "No fighting." The bartender held us there for a few seconds more, then dropped her stasis field. The turian went back to her seat.

Kreeg broke the silence. "Aww, Tomyra. You spoiled the show." My feet rumbled from the bass. Krogan had voices like stampeding wildebeests. "How about another drink? They're all on him."

I waved my card on the terminal to transfer the credits. I figured I could sneak them through to Madeleine as expenses. Security detail and backup sounded official. "How about another bourbon, and whatever my turian friend is having." The bartender seemed less annoyed and disgusted with me, which I took as a good sign. Her movements were a little more graceful and she still looked like an asari, so I decided to apply my charm. She dropped off my drink and I said, "Thanks. My name's Blake. Corrigan Blake." Saying a name that way always weakened knees, or so the vids told me. "I'm looking for a girl."

"I'm not surprised." Tomyra had graduated to wiping a dry glass.

I punched up a still of Lorelei on my omni-tool and showed it to her. I saw the krogan and turian look over as well. "Seen her? We were supposed to meet up here."

The asari did me the favor of looking. "Sorry," she said, shaking her head. "Try Merrin. He has the day shift."

I thought this was the day shift. Time was hard to track on the Citadel. It was like a forty-five kilometer long casino. "I will." I shut off my omni-tool and gave her my winningest smile. "I like it here. You know, if you're ever looking for a bouncer, I might be persuaded to accept the offer."

She stopped and looked at me, hard eyes narrowing. My vision blurred for a second and I saw a flash of white light, but then her eyes softened. "You know," she said, her voice softening into a melting purr, "I could use a big strong human like you to help me. I'm so lonely." She moved in for a kiss, and when I realized that I was late for an exam in a class I hadn't been to in years and I'd forgotten my locker combination, I knew I was dreaming.

My eyes blinked open and I felt the floor under my back. I lifted myself onto my elbows and saw the bar at the far end of the room, then looked back at the wall she'd thrown me into. Shrewd guesswork made the blur my flight and the white light the impact. I climbed to my feet and made my way back to the bar. At least this time no one laughed at me. Maybe I'd earned some respect after all. "Don't mind her," Kreeg rumbled. "Her mother was a krogan."

"It was my father, you humpless quad-kisser."

Kreeg rumbled a landslide disguised as a laugh. I swallowed half my drink to quiet the pounding that was already starting in my head. "Nice throw," I said. "I've always wondered what it would be like to have that kind of power." Pausing for a second, like I knew I was about to say something dumb, I said, "I understand there are things that can, ah, facilitate that. Do you know of a place where a guy can, uh, dust up?"

I froze again, the biotic field shooting those weird tingles through my nerves. Tomyra stood in front of me. "If you ever," she said, in clipped tones my sister would envy, "say anything, like that again, in my bar, I will personally show you, what embracing eternity, is really all about." She let me go. "Finish your drink and get out."

I did both. I walked out and into the corridor that led vaguely towards my apartment. I didn't move fast. The area was pretty deserted. I heard the footsteps behind me and I lingered near a dark access corridor that jutted off the main one. My turian friend drew close. "Blake, was it?" she said, sounding friendly for a change. She looked around and stepped into the shadows of the access corridor. "You looking to get sandblasted? I can help with that."

I smiled and moved in closer to her. "I thought you might."

She tilted her head. "Follow me, and I'll take care of you." We moved through the shadows, past several metal shipping crates that seemed to litter the Citadel everywhere.

"Much obliged," I said. We went a short way in silence. "Oh, I forgot to mention. Your makeup is smudged." The turian spun and faced me with her pistol out and pointed at my gut. I stood there with my hands in my pockets, as relaxed and calm as one can be while at gunpoint. "Am I to assume I'm under arrest?"

I enjoyed the way her lower mandibles worked in silence as she looked for something to say. "You're coming with me," she said in a cop's clipped official voice, which fit her much better since she was one. She waved me on with the pistol. "How did you know?"

"Well, you're a turian, so it's always a safe assumption." I started walking again, to show I was coming peacefully. "I saw a tiny bit of blue on your left cheek and guessed you were covering your markings. I knew C-Sec was working that place for a red sand angle. You played the part of a merc and got into it with me but you didn't draw your gun, and you made sure Tomyra had plenty of time to prevent a fight. Your armor is crap but your pistol is pristine and also standard C-Sec issue." She radiated displeasure. "Maybe next time leave the infiltration tactics to the salarians."

"Shut up," she said, pushing me into the back of a waiting C-Sec patrol vehicle. She got in the passenger side and wiped the makeup off her face as the uniformed turian driver took off.

I knew Madeleine would be pleased. It had been almost twelve hours before I got hauled in by the cops.


	4. Chapter 4: The Turian Inquisition

On the bright side, I hadn't been arrested. They drove me to their local station, took my pistol for safe-keeping, and had me cool my heels in a spare office. The small room made Madeline's look ostentatious. I wondered if decorations were against the rules. The place was doing a brisk business, with a bunch of drunk and disorderlies along with some busted brawlers. It reminded me fondly of my military career.

I browsed the extranet while I waited, looking at crime and other reports from Tayseri Ward to see if I could connect a dot to anything. Nothing jumped out and to do it seriously would have taken a dedicated info broker, which I wasn't going to pay anyway, but it gave me something to do. After a while the door opened and two C-Sec officers stepped in. One was my friend, now cleaned up and in an armored uniform, the blue a close match to her uncovered facial tattoo. The other was human, maybe forty or so, with close-cropped gray hair clinging to the sides of his otherwise bald head. He was in civvies.

Plain-clothes spoke first. "Even uglier than you said, Sev." He gave me a sneer like he thought he was funny. I guessed he was trying to show me that I wasn't going to get special treatment just because we matched race. My entire life had been a long seminar on that subject. He walked to one of the desks and half-sat on it, looking at me like I was a public defender. "So are you really a private eye, like Mariana Trench?"

"Sure," I said. He was referring to a series of movies starring a hanar floating around in a fedora and trenchcoat. "'This one believes that it is witnessing the initiation of a mutually beneficial acquaintance.'"

My turian friend didn't join in on the antics. "Mr. Blake, do you know why you are here?" The tag on her uniform gave me her full name, Severa Martius. Her face and folded-arm posture was all business.

I gave a half-shrug. "I walked into a bar and asked about scoring drugs in front of an undercover cop." It was the obvious answer, but my gut said there was more to it. The other guy gave a snort and shook his head, like I'd admitted to being an idiot. I didn't have a solid counter-argument.

She clicked a talon against her folded arm. Her dark eyes were hard and fixed on mine. I started to wonder if my kinetic barrier would hold up when she snapped. "What, exactly, do you think you are doing?" To my surprise, her voice was still level and measured. The turian had a lot of self-control.

Of course, that meant I had to test it. "Waiting to see what I get charged with. I still have a few on my bucket list I'm hoping to clear."

She snapped out a hand and dragged me forward until our faces were inches apart. "Keep this up and your bucket list will end up closed. Permanently." She shoved me back into the chair while her partner chuckled. To my surprise, though, she regained her composure. Severa paced a little, which was all the room could stand. "You're a civilian agent, working a case for the Alliance. Which is classified. And you end up in a bar we're working undercover, asking about the very thing we're trying to crack. In front of someone you picked up on as C-Sec before you did it. Knowing we were working it." She paced a bit more. She stopped, lifting one folded arm to tap a talon on her chin. "Please, tell me, are you as galactically stupid as your actions make you out to be?"

I had to think about that one. "You know, when you put it that way…." It really had been stupid. Hell, I knew it when I did it.

That got a chuckle from her plain-clothes partner. "Hey, at least he's honest."

"Shut up, Weaver," she said, the phrase smooth and worn from a lot of use. She focused on me. "What's your case? What are you working on?"

"It's classified. I'm sorry." I waited under her glare.

She broke first. "Give me something, and I won't have to arrest you for attempting to buy narcotics and assaulting an officer. Do me a favor and spare me the paperwork." She was appealing to something that stretched across species and star systems: a dislike of forms and busywork.

I resisted, barely. It was a universal appeal. "You can't make those charges stick. We both know that."

Severa nodded, ceding me the point. "True," she said, leaning over me and putting her arms on the armrests. I started wondering if she really did want to kiss me. "However, I can hold you on the charges while I accidentally lose the paperwork, forget about you, and have to apologize profusely in a week for denying your liberty through unfortunate bureaucratic oversight." She leaned back. "I imagine your employer will be upset with such a delay to your case."

She could do just that, but it was the worst she could do. I was glad to have the threat out and done with so I could negotiate it away and maybe come out with something. I sighed like I was cowed. "Look," I said, "I'll tell you what I can. There was an incident a couple years ago on an Alliance base. I'm looking for a couple witnesses. There was red sand involved. Somebody mentioned the bar as a contact point before they disappeared. The Alliance is keen to keep this quiet. There's fear that it's big and they can't take a chance on it getting out. Hence an independent agent." I shifted. "I'm just trying to do my job, you know?"

I was hoping that would appeal to them. Everything I said was true, from a certain perspective, so I didn't think they'd read my body language as lying. I hoped that giving some information could make them amenable to returning the favor. If they didn't bite I had nothing to lose, since this was all I had to go on.

Severa didn't give the impression that she cared about my job, sadly. "Doing your job could get you killed. Or even worse, it could get me killed." She did more of the talon-tapping. "Tell you what. Give me a copy of that picture you showed the bartender and I'll run it through our vid archives, see if she pops. Also, hand over any unclassified information you have. It may give us a break in the case. I'll keep you posted with what shakes out."

I already regretted showing that pic. If I were smart, I'd have gone for a vague description. If I were smart, I wouldn't be here at all, so no point crying about it. "Sorry. I can't do that. As much as I'd like to let you do all my legwork. Tell you what I can do, though." I popped up my omni-display and ran through the files. "These vials were found during the investigation. Anything look familiar?"

They both took a look. There were 4 images, from various angles. "Pretty standard looking vials," Weaver said. "Transport method of choice among those who can afford better than a baggie."

"Wait," Severa said, pointing at one of the images. "Can you enhance this one?"

"I'll do you one better and give them to you," I said.

She gave me a quick nod and opened up her own omni. A few seconds later she had the images up on a bigger screen on the office vid-monitor. She zoomed in on the one that caught her eye and did some cleanup of the image. "Right there," she said, pointing to a small mark on the metal cap on one vial. It was tiny, less than three millimeters, but it was definitely a mark and not a scratch or corrosion. It was circular with some patterned detail, but only part of it was visible in the picture. "Look familiar, Weaver?" She punched some commands into her omni-tool and another image appeared on the screen alongside. It was another laser-etched stamp, but the whole symbol was visible. It was a stylized snake forming a circle, its tail wrapped around and merging into the body behind the serpent's head. The pattern I'd seen in the first image was supposed to be scales.

Her partner whistled. "I'll be damned. Good eye, Sev."

She looked at me. "I need you to tell me everything you know about this. I don't care how classified your employer has made it." Her voice and face made it clear I had little wiggle room.

I wiggled anyway. "Tell me why I should."

Weaver gave his ugly little laugh. "Want me to disable the cameras, Sev?" It wouldn't have been the first time I'd been worked over by the authorities under those circumstances.

To my surprise, the turian shook her head. She paced again for a little bit, but I knew I'd given her something important and she wanted more. My position had improved. I lit a cigarette and waited.

"Alright," she said, talking as she moved. "That mark is one being used by a new distributor that popped up about a year ago. They muscled in on some smaller groups here in Tayseri. We had reports of intra-gang violence around then but it never reached priority." Criminals killing criminals rarely did until it spilled over into innocents. "This group spread fast but kept a low profile. By the time C-Sec got onto their trail they were a major player in the ward. Then officers began disappearing. A couple patrols at first, caught deep in the worst areas. Patrol vehicles were found empty. Then we started the undercover investigation that led us to Tranquility. The first detective disappeared a month in. The next one lasted two before vanishing a month ago. Never found the bodies. Weaver here has been undercover for almost three months which makes him the record-holder so far. I've been on this case for three weeks." She stopped moving and looked at me like I was a person. "This group has been murdering officers. Weaver and I are the next targets. We can't get anything to break. You're the first new thing that's happened in a month. I'm asking for your help."

I would've been happier with threats of bodily harm. She didn't even need to show me pictures of the orphans. "I'll tell you what I can. Those vials were found on Eden Prime. There's a military connection, but I don't have proof of who they belonged to."

Severa tapped her talons on the desk. "Military connection. We know these guys are disciplined and well-organized, since none of the usual gang stuff like open violence and unrelated criminal activity has been connected to them."

"Maybe," Weaver said, his brow wrinkled up like thinking was a challenge. "Could just be a grunt with a bad habit." He fixed me a look. "He's not telling us, so we can't know for sure." He looked like he wanted to make me talk, but not before a good amount of pain.

The turian sized me up. "You sure there isn't anything else you can give us?"

I shook my head. "If I had anything concrete for you, I'd give it over. The one that hired me wasn't big on details. Need-to-know, the usual."

She nodded. C-Sec was like the military, with most of the officers mushrooms. Fed manure and kept in the dark. "If anything comes loose, you have my contact info. Use it. And do me a favor. Stay away from the bar. The only thing you'll get out of that place is an unmarked grave. Probably for both of us." She shut down the vid screen and opened the door. "You're free to go."

I got to my feet as she left, tossing my butt into the trash can. Weaver paused at the door. "Hey, sorry if things got a little unfriendly. We're both on edge." I didn't mention that he was the one that suggested hands-on interrogation, and the turian was reasonably cool. A couple death threats, sure but I'd come to accept that as part of civilized conversation. "Look," he said, following his own advice by glancing outside the door, "if you want to go to the place during the day shift, talk to the bartender, Merrin. I saw him talk to a girl a couple days ago. Might have been yours."

"Thanks. I'll do that."

"No problem." I liked his scowl more than his friendly smile. "We humans have to stick together, right? Just don't give me away when you show up."

He left me to find my own way out. I was grateful. All I'd wanted was a drink, and now I just wanted to sleep. I hoped getting the latter would be a little less eventful.


	5. Chapter 5: Being Watched

Either the bed was deceptively comfortable, or a day that included dealing with my sister, traveling millions of miles, and ending in a police station made me a lot less picky. My head was aching from my high-speed introduction to yesterday's wall, but some painkillers, scotch, and a shower improved my outlook. I didn't normally drink this early, but, to be fair, I wasn't often up this early either. I suited up, wishing I was wearing some heavy assault armor instead. The message I got saying "Congratulations! Almost twelve hours before you got picked up by the cops - M" certainly didn't improve my mood. I had a bad feeling about the day. That wasn't unusual, because the days I woke feeling like life was great always ended up terrible. A bad feeling was almost encouraging.

I hit the streets and made my way back to Tranquility. The streets were busier than yesterday, the respectable folks and their opposites going about their business at the tail end of the Ward. I got propositioned twice for action, one that called for a bed and another that called for k nuckles, and passed on both. I figured I had enough problems already.

The bar was busier too. It seemed like a wet lunch was popular in this area. I saw Weaver halfway down the bar, in roughly the same spot his partner occupied last night. Maybe that was designated parking for the fuzz. Half the tables were full with a healthy mix of races. The salarian bartender Merrin was bantering with the clientele with the fast patter normal to his people. He seemed popular. I made a note to tell Tomyra that the night shift might attract more customers if she was nicer. I followed that thought with a plan to stand behind Kreeg when I said it.

I made my way to the bar and waited. It didn't take long. I watched the salarian work and he was easily the most efficient bartender I'd ever seen. Not a wasted movement. Salarians produced a lot of scientists, and apparently Merrin was a doctor of mixology. I liked the guy already. He got to me, scooped an empty glass and a peel from the bar while dropping a square napkin in front of me in one fluid motion and said, "Greetings, good sir. Would you like a beer, some horosk, or would you rather skip straight to the hangover with some batarian ale?" He smiled like a polished salesman at the end of the rapid-fire speech.

"Whiskey, rocks, and a chat when you've got a minute."

He nodded as if he expected nothing more, deftly filled my drink request, and sat it on the napkin. "Part one. I'll return shortly for the rest."

It didn't take him long to come back. He started slicing some sort of fruit for garnishes as a cover as he asked what I needed. "I'm looking for a girl, human, blonde. She may have come in for information regarding a certain type of sand in the last couple days. I was wondering if you've seen her."

He concentrated on getting the width of the green fruit slices just right. "Seen her? Sure. Two days ago. Sent her along to the market. Everything's available there." His voice didn't have the same level of conviviality it had before. "Told her to look for a fellow named Graham."

I didn't know the neighborhood well enough, but I knew he didn't mean regular commerce. "Where can I find the market?"

He gave me directions. It wasn't far. "Once there, you'll see a three-eyed batarian. Tell him Merrin sent you." The salarian moved on to another customer, his banter back to his previous level of helpful neighborhood friend. I finished my drink and glanced over at Weaver, who was not looking at me so hard he might as well have worn a sign.

I headed out, making my way in the opposite direction I needed to go. My sister tells me I'm as paranoid as a banker in a bad neighborhood, but I point out that it must be working because I'm still breathing. I wanted a little bit of time before I wandered into a black market anyway. I smoked a cigarette as I crossed a busy plaza and made my way into side alley with no other foot traffic. At the end I turned right and went a few steps before leaning against a wall to finish my smoke. I nodded to the two fellows who came out of the alley not long after I did. They tried to keep their faces blank, but they looked angry. No one likes being made.

The pair moved off and I wondered if they'd keep following me or if they had someone to switch off. I couldn't tell whether they were cops or something else. That worried me a little. They were both human, but C-Sec had a good bit of them on the force so it couldn't be ruled out. Their incompetence at tailing only meant they weren't special agents. I figured I was dealing with C-Sec, Alliance military, or some hired goons for a less-than-legal outfit.

As I wandered I checked off the Alliance. No way my sister would be involved with anyone that shoddy. Besides me. Anyway, if she was willing to have the military here she wouldn't need her kid brother stumbling around. So it had to be cops or thugs. Of course, with fine fellows like Weaver in C-Sec it made the line between the two possibilities a little blurry. I made a few more movements to smoke out another tail, but didn't find anyone. I started to head towards the market. It wouldn't be the first black market on the Citadel I'd been to. I hadn't been to this one before, but the same rules would apply. No stupid questions, no prolonged eye contact, no loud disputes, and no real names. Maybe I'd even follow those rules this time.

I had a feeling like I was being watched again. I was getting close to the market and tried a few more of my tricks. I didn't see my buddies from earlier, so I figured they traded up. Whoever they passed me off to was a lot better. There were enough people around to make it hard to tell, and my blind-alley tricks yielded me nothing. Either I was wrong about the tail or they were good. I got tired of messing around and figured I'd just let them tag along. If they were even there.

I went down the alley Merrin told me to take. At the end was a door and big ugly batarian sitting on a metal shipping crate. I had to get close to see that one of his four eyes was just a scar. He sneered at me, which I considered the universal greeting between our races. I told him who sent me and he just stared at me, trying to be intimidating. Batarians always claimed that their four eyes, one pair set higher on the forehead than the other, gave them an advantage in negotiations with two-eyed races, since we'd never be sure which pair to fix on. It was a load of vorcha dung, as far as I was concerned. I waited him out and he eventually gestured his head towards the door. The electronic lock turned green and I walked through.

For a wonder I wasn't shot immediately. My day was looking up. The door I went through was a narrow hall that opened up onto a much bigger area. Where I was didn't look all that different from a normal Citadel market, like a spacious shopping mall. The streets were wide, there were vendors in booths, there was chatter and shoppers and good-natured haggling. Unlike the regular market, though, everyone was armed and looked like they were ready to use them. Each booth or group of them had some armed protection, which seemed to keep the violence to a minimum. At least no one died in the first five minutes I was there.

I made my way to a spot not far from where I came in, up some stairs to a railed upper deck with a good eyeline to the spot I came from. I wanted to see if I was right about being followed. I waited for a while but no one else came through. Looking around, I figured there must be a dozen different ways to get to this place, to minimize the traffic at a single location. I'm sure C-Sec knew it was here and even occasionally dropped by for a friendly raid, but appearances had to be kept up. Plus it kept the civilians out of the place, which was better for everyone involved. C-Sec would come down a lot harder if innocents got waxed in a black market, plus the regulars wouldn't appreciate the tourists. Already I was getting a hard eye from a few who didn't recognize me. I ignored them and smoked and scoped out the place.

What I was looking for, besides the people following me, was a dealer. Whoever it'd be would be a mid-level player at best, since dealing in a market meant exposure, even in these relatively guarded confines. Low-levels would be out in the Citadel at large getting busted. The higher levels wouldn't have anything visible to do with the business. I needed to find one who was willing to talk about an Admiral's daughter in exchange for a lot of Reasonable Expenses. I didn't want to ask around for Graham by name, not yet anyway. I knew names were frowned upon in places like this.

I'd given up on the ambush for my stalkers and had a pair of dealer candidates in mind when I saw a couple of fellows making their way through the crowd. They were moving like people who are following someone and weren't good at it. Normally people moving through a crowd don't fixate on an object ahead of them. A regular shopper would look around. Someone who was good at tailing would do the same thing. This pair were human, like my guys, only they weren't the same guys. Didn't have exactly the same look either. These two looked like bad news, although that meant they fit in here a lot better. Hard eyes and faces, like they were used to getting punched. Thick, too, like a lot of the Marines I'd served with who were dedicated to being meatheads.

They stopped their pursuit and started looking around idly in the worst attempt at nonchalance since the first time I walked into an asari strip joint. Their quarry had stopped. I checked the crowd ahead of them, trying to figure out who they were after, since it definitely wasn't me. I figured it out when the hulks started moving on again. They were following someone wearing a non-descript brown outfit, basically a short robe with a hood over some trousers. Not shabby enough to be noticed, not nice enough to be envied. I watched their target for a little bit, then remembered someone during my bout of paranoia earlier. I'd seen this person walk into a side street when I was checking for a tail. I recognized the boots, black with a simple line design in blue at the top. I started to suspect it was my tail, when I saw a glimpse of her face when she looked around briefly. I grinned, stubbed out my smoke, and made my way down the stairs to say hello.

She was looking at an array of weapon mods at a booth dealing Batarian State Arms equipment as I sidled up next to her. "I'd have thought Armax Arsenal equipment would be more your speed." Armax dealt in high-end special forces military technology for the turians.

Severa didn't even look up. "You actually do have a death wish, Blake. I only supposed that before." She toyed with a recoil damper that looked as heavy and ugly as a batarian itself.

"Maybe. Lucky for me I have C-Sec keeping an eye on me. Makes me feel safe."

"I bet a month in solitary would feel extra cozy, then." She dropped the damper and moved on. She figured I'd follow her.

She was right. "Probably would. Solitary brings me closer to my friends. Speaking of, you've got a pair of admirers with their eyes all over you."

I never knew a gasp could be sarcastic. "Really? And here I thought this outfit would spare me from unwanted followers." Her flicked eyes towards me implicated me as part of that category.

"You were the one following me. I was starting to wonder if you'd become smitten."

"With what? Severe head trauma? Sudden onset blindness? A near-suicidal lack of taste?" I was really starting to like her. We walked quietly for a few seconds. "These two picked me up once I got here. I was tailed by a different pair before then. They're as bad as the guys I had on you."

It was nice to be right about something for a change. "They're worse. These guys look like extras from a Blasto movie. As subtle as krogan belch."

She nodded. "That's true. They're so bad that it's hard to pick out the others."

"Others?"

She looked at a schematic for a biotic amp at a booth. "At my 2 o'clock, upstairs. Blue jacket. At my 8, overcoat baldy."

I gave it a few before I checked those positions. Sure enough, she had other eyes on her. Just as hard, but a lot more discrete. The blunderers were a feint. I'd walked into a well-coordinated and tightening net. "Oops." I like understatement.

"Ahhh. So you're stupid, not suicidal. I guess that qualifies as improvement." Being followed by a couple of people was one thing. Usually it meant surveillance. More than two reeks of an ambush in the making. Someone was on to Severa. I thought about her predecessors on this case. It looked like she had some folks that wanted her to join them on the Missing list.

"You have backup coming?" There was always the hope.

She rummaged through parts and shook her head. "I went dark when I got here, in case transmissions are monitored. Now my comm is dead. They're probably jamming me."

"Figures." I had some ideas, but I wanted to know hers. "What's your play?"

"Scoping out where I want them to hit me. See if I can reverse the ambush."

She made it sound like it'd be easy. These guys looked professional. I sucked air between my teeth. "I can't think of anything else we can do. Find a place yet?"

She looked at me directly for the first time. "'We?' Never mind what I said before. You are suicidal." She laughed a little, tossing a silencer back to the bin and started walking again. "If it's because you have a crush on me, I'll tell you now not to get your hopes up."

"Don't start your letter to Fornax just yet." Fornax was a magazine dedicated to human and alien relations of the more intimate variety. "I'm just a fan of underdogs."

We wandered along for a bit. "There's an alley up ahead, quiet and out of the way. Should be able to lead them in and surprise them. They probably won't expect you to fight." She eyed me up and down quickly. "Or to do much if you do."

"See? Things are looking up." My heart started to pump a little faster. Impending violence and probable fatal encounters had a way of doing that. I scanned the crowd looking for anyone else that might be joining the fun. Up ahead of us there was a human woman, deep tanned skin with short dark hair with tattoos on her face and hands. She was striking, especially with her square jaw and high cheekbones. Her eyes went past me like I wasn't worth noticing and I didn't stare either. I tapped Severa on the arm and led us in her direction. The turian didn't ask why, which I appreciated. I hated answering questions.

I got close to the young woman. I kept my voice pitched low. "Hi, Lorelei. This is Severa, with C-Sec. We'd appreciate it if you took a little walk with us."


	6. Chapter 6: A Great Plan

I've never had much luck introducing myself to women. In the last day alone I'd tried it with two, and one threw me into a wall and the other took me into custody. As things go, those were two of my more successful attempts. In retrospect, all of five seconds later, dragging my missing person into a rapidly-closing ambush and hinting that she was about to be arrested in the middle of a black market were both exceedingly stupid things to do. I've always listened to my instincts and trusted them, which has earned me more ass-kickings than I can count. Sucker me always ends up giving them another chance.

The way her eyes got big told me I was right about her identity. The way the two guys standing near her that I'd unfortunately been too excited to see – part of me never expected to find her at all, so I'd had tunnel vision like a volus who'd sniffed a credit – told me I was an idiot for dropping the name of the law. We all just stood there for a few very rapid heartbeats. Both of the men were dressed better than most and looked squared-away. It reminded me a lot of military officers on leave who can't help but make sure their zipper lines match up with their belt buckle. Not formal, not informal, but very, very neat.

Then one of them turned his head and looked behind us. It suddenly dawned on me that he was on the same team as our shadows. When he cocked his head towards us I reacted. My pistol would have taken too long to pull, so instead my omni-tool flared to life. I had no idea what to expect, but when my fist swung forward I saw it sheathed in the familiar orange glow. When it connected with the guy's jaw I didn't even feel the impact, but the way his head snapped back told me it hurt plenty. I didn't wait around to ask him how much.

I filed a mental note to thank Madeleine for that upgrade and gave as casual a "run" suggestion as I could manage, grabbing Lorelei's wrist in order to show exactly what I meant and to make sure she was with us. I heard Severa mutter a few choice and decidedly original words behind me, but I also heard her following. The girl was protesting a bit but she must have had too many complaints and questions to let out since they mostly just garbled around in her throat. I was already picturing the biotic beatdown she was going to give me.

I led the way to the alley I'd picked earlier for our counter-ambush, trying to push my way through as kindly and gently a person dragging someone along by the wrist and in a bit of a hurry could manage. My instincts told me to yell something and I didn't think about it before I said it. "C-Sec raid!" I shouted, and my running seemed to make a lot more sense to the people around me. I heard more of them repeat my shout and beat feet themselves. I was hoping it would leave less folks around when the fireworks started, and I was hoping the chaos in my wake would slow down our pursuers.

We got into the corridor, a narrow run between two buildings. In my mind, a black market alley would be dank and dirty and filled with garbage, but on the Citadel even the criminal underground was clean. The keepers clearly didn't just keep to the Presidium. All in all it made me feel a little disappointed. There were exposed power junctions and fans high on either wall and some metal containers haphazardly stored here for no reason I could figure, but I was happy to duck behind some and look to the mouth of the alley to see if our pursuit had caught up.

Lorelei took the opportunity to barrage Severa and me with heated questions. I was too busy scanning the entrance and getting my pistol out and looking to see if I had any quality electronic countermeasures installed on my omni-tool to listen to what she had to say. I did catch a "What's going on?" and an "Are you really with C-Sec?" and more than a few that denigrated my mental faculties, but I ignored them for now. I checked to see if my communicator was shut down like Severa's instead, which it was. I figured Severa would break under the questioning before I did.

My instincts justified my future miscalculations by turning out to be right. "Yes, I'm with C-Sec. As for who he is and what he thinks he's doing, ask him." She didn't give Lorelei a chance. "OK, Blake, just what exactly is our plan? And why did you drag her along? This your missing blonde? I wasn't sure if you noticed that she isn't."

I was hoping for a gun-toting force of bad guys to get me off the hook. I sat and watched but, other than a few running people still dashing towards hither or yon, there was no pursuit. I cursed. I genuinely preferred firefights to questions. Finally, the weight of their two increasingly contemptuous stares got to me. "Yeah. Hair dye and dermal pigment alteration and fake tattoos, but that's her. Lorelei, I've been hired to bring you back to Daddy. Severa, I was hoping to jump our pursuers when they came in here after us. I think I managed to spook them back there and they bugged out." I gave them my winningest grin – the one I pull out when I win.

The way they both called me an idiot simultaneously was almost endearing. Actually, Lorelei portrayed me as a brain-dead vorcha and Severa offered up an unflattering comparison to the back end of an elcor, but it was still said at the same time and I knew what they meant.

They decided to elaborate. Lorelei let Severa start. "These guys were professionals hunting down a C-Sec officer with intent to kill. You think they're giving up?"

"I have no intention of going back to my father right now, no matter how pathetic a thug he sends." That one hurt. I preferred scoundrel or ruffian.

Severa had her gun out. "Do you even know if this alley goes anywhere, or are we holed up waiting to see if they go away? Did you bring food?"

Lorelei answered the first part. "I know where this alley goes. It opens back out after a bend or two. They could be coming at us the other way."

"If all humans had your tactical genius, we'd have rolled you up at Shanxi and never stopped until Earth was a new turian vacation spot."

By the time they were done, I was the size of a volus finger puppet. My grin had retreated to the losingest scowl I owned, and I had a variety to choose from. I used my left hand to light a cigarette, since they hadn't offered me one or a blindfold before they executed my ego. They were fiddling with their own omni-tools and muttering new nicknames for me I didn't want to remember. After a minute I said, "OK. Maybe. But why haven't they just hit us from both sides by now?"

They didn't have an answer for that, but an electronically amplified voice from the alley entrance answered for me. "All right, C-Sec. Let the girl leave the alley and no one has to get hurt. Both ends of the alley are capped. You aren't getting out otherwise."

Forget a winning grin. I gave them the biggest brick-hittable smirking smile I owned, and I had even more of them than scowls. "See? Told you I knew what I was doing." I didn't, but what the hell. I now knew that our shadows wanted the girl for some reason, which meant they couldn't just lob grenades at us.

The looks I got back were icy enough to chill a vat of bourbon. I shrugged them off because I liked mine neat anyway. "OK, so they aren't going to charge in," Severa said, "but every second that ticks by means that more of them can get here. And they'll probably bring gas or something to flush us out. So, yes, we aren't dead now, but I fail to see how additional time is going to help. I guess I could use it to update my will."

I liked her attitude. I came up with a dumb plan. Any plan cooked up in an alley when surrounded is bound to be. I asked Severa if she had an earpiece communicator on her. Most C-Sec's did, even though they could use their omni-tools for it. I guess the idea was that it'd be hands-free, but most of them put their hand to their ear anyway when they used it. I think they feel doing that makes them look like someone more important, like a doorman at Afterlife.

She handed it to me and I said some things in it while I played with my omni-tool. They could shut out my access to communications channels but not its other functions. It took a minute. While I played with it I called out to the guy. "How can we be sure you'll let us go?" I didn't listen to his answer because I knew he'd be lying anyway, and it didn't matter what he said. I shushed Severa when she asked what I was doing.

Lorelei didn't have that much faith in me. She grabbed the turian's arm and said, "You can't let them take me."

"Calm down. We're not going to do that. Are we?" That last part was directed towards me, and it clearly wasn't a question.

"Nope," I muttered, setting Severa's earpiece down. With my old military omni, I could have done a better job in a quarter the time, but the Alliance tended to take their goodies back when you marshalled out. I gestured them both towards the back of the alley. We started moving and my voice called out behind us. "OK, give us a minute. We'll do as you ask, but we need to trust you. We don't want anything happening to the girl either."

Severa's narrowed eyes made it clear that she wanted to hit my smirk with a brick. I flicked my cigarette away and made some hand gestures towards her as we went back in the alley and approached the first bend, a left-hand one. I pointed at my eyes and then towards the corner, made a fist and opened my palm before shaking my index finger down twice. She watched it all impassively. "What is that supposed to mean?"

I sighed. I was hoping she knew, because I'd never bothered to learn all the hand signs. "Let me go first." I slid down to the corner and squatted before slowly easing the side of my head around to look for trouble. Behind us we could hear my recorded voice ask for someone to disarm themselves and slowly make their way to us, and we'd exchange the girl for the hostage.

The alley ahead of me was empty, but jogged back to the right a short way down. I figured the other end would be guarded, and they'd probably be coming up towards our position, but I hoped not too quickly since they could hear my voice back there. I slipped down, pistol out, hopefully looking pretty competent as I quick-walked to the other corner. I peered around and saw the pair of tails behind Severa from before, the big obvious ones. They held a couple of pistols and were making their way down, but not cautiously. They figured they knew where we were.

I turned and held up two fingers to Severa and made a walking motion with my fingers and flashed all ten fingers. She nodded like she knew what I meant this time, which was good because I wasn't making stuff up anymore. Two targets, at a walk, ten meters away. The turian sidled up next to me, jammed her thumb at herself then jerked it to her left. I nodded, flashed her a three, followed by a two, then two beats later I spun out in a crouch and fired three quick shots at the lug on the right while she stood over me and popped four faster ones into the one on the left.

I hit with two of three and felt good about it when my target went down. Severa hit all four of hers , of course, but I still felt cocky. "Let's go!" I said, and started down the alley at a run. We needed to find an exit from the market area, but I was confident that one of the other two would know the closest one. I got about five steps when I saw a couple of shadows at the exit to the alley. I yelled out and started backpedaling just as the clatter of assault rifles echoed down the alley.

I felt the impact of the shots that hit my shields only faintly, but there were way more of them than I was comfortable with. My shields felt the same way. Just before I reached the corner I felt them drop and a sharp pain hit the back of my right thigh. It wasn't serious, I hoped. It was a graze. I was just happy they weren't using incendiary ammo or something even nastier.

I could hear shouting from the other end of the alley as my little ruse was uncovered by the gunfire. Severa ran down the short corridor we were in and looked back at where we'd come from. She swore and popped a few pistol shots before taking cover at the corner of the wall. "What now, genius?" Her calm was beginning to wear a bit.

I popped a few rounds at the fellas with the big guns blocking our exit. I didn't have an answer for her yet, and if I said "Get shot, I guess" I was pretty sure she'd be the one to put me down.


	7. Chapter 7: Taking a Few Shots

There was no talking for the next couple of minutes, unless you count swearing. I did plenty of that for all of us. I leaned out whenever there was a gap in the gunfire and fired as many rounds as I could, but the pistol was heating up fast. I had all the ammo I needed, what with each shot being tiny, but the immense speed they were fired built up a lot of heat. Too much and the automatic failsafe would kick in, leaving it inoperable until it cooled down again. Five seconds without a working firearm was a lifetime in a firefight.

The two guys on my end didn't give me many chances at any rate. They alternated fire in a coordinated way, one firing a few bursts while the other one cooled his weapon off, alternating smoothly so there was practically no break. I couldn't get a fix on them to use any tricks from my omni-tool since they'd take my face off if I tried. All they needed to do was keep us pinned until someone got here with a way to neutralize us. Time was getting short.

I kept an eye on the others as much as I could. Severa was cool, popping out to snap off a few shots that sometimes landed, based on the shouts I heard. She did give me a look that was a combination of determined and resigned. I think she'd gotten used to the idea of dying here when she realized she was being tailed. If I hadn't been here she'd probably already be dead, which would've made me feel good if it wasn't for the fact I had merely managed to delay the process and dragged myself and someone else in on it.

Lorelei was surprisingly calm, but as things went on she started looking more desperate. I think she was hoping one of our guns would force an opening. She looked at me and opened her mouth like she wanted to say something, but wasn't sure what it would be.

Severa's scream made whatever it was irrelevant. She'd swung around the corner and gotten off a couple of rounds when a rifle burst got her in the chest. Like me, she had shields but no armor on, and the shots took her shield down and a few ripped into her left torso close to the shoulder. She cursed and leaned away from the corner, resting her back against the wall. I started towards her and she raised a claw. "I'm fine," she said, sounding anything but. "We need an exit. Now."

"How many over there?"

"Four. One is down and wounded, but one of them is armored. You?"

"Two. About twenty meters down, no cover." She cursed and I agreed.

Lorelei looked between the two of us. She said, "Can you move?" Severa nodded, and Lorelei moved over to my corner. "OK. Then follow me." Severa put her gun around the corner behind her and fired off some shots to keep them back before staggering over towards us. Lorelei took a deep breath, put her hands straight forward, palms up, went around the corner and started trotting down the alley.

My shock wore off and I shouted at the woman running into assault weapon fire as I followed her, ready to get torn to shreds in a pointless attempt to stop her from the same fate. I could see the pair at the end of the alley hesitate when they saw the girl. With the lack of gunfire I felt a lot better. I raised my gun at the guy on the right but two sharp cracks from behind me made it unnecessary. Severa's wound didn't throw off her aim and the bad guy took them both in the face.

That made the other guy's math a lot easier to do. He didn't want to get subtracted so he raised his gun and sent a full barrage of shots down the center of the alley. By the time I shouted and expected to see Lorelei torn to pieces I saw there was no point. In front of the girl's outstretched hands a shimmering field of blue showed the impacts being stopped by her barrier. She was a strong biotic, alright. She kept moving forward at a jog, but I saw her wince as she got closer. I snapped off a couple of rounds at her assailant but trying to keep up was throwing off my aim. The shots spacked harmlessly into the wall.

Lorelei was about five meters away when she bent over to the side, hands wavering. I could see the grimace on her face from the effort. She made a low grunt that started to build into a shout. I fired a few more rounds rapidly but missed, and in my haste I didn't pay attention to the heat. I heard my pistol chirp at me to let me know that it was on break. I threw a look back to Severa, hoping she'd cavalry up a couple more deadly shots, but she was staggering. Her right hand holding the pistol was pressed against her chest and dark blue blood ran down underneath it.

I turned around and cursed, feeling like an idiot because I'd forgotten my ace. I lifted my arm and my omni-tool flared to life. Lorelei's shields gave me time to access the one countermeasure my omni had. My fingers danced as I locked on to his assault rifle and sent a burst of data at it. The assault rifle fire abruptly cut off as I tripped his gun's heat failsafe and rendered it useless for a few seconds. He said a bad word and dropped his rifle, reaching behind his back for a backup weapon.

In the meantime Lorelei's shout was getting louder. She took four running steps towards the man bringing up his pistol, her hands clenched into fists as she pulled them back. The gun sighted her down and she threw her hands forward just as her voice reached a crescendo of rage. I could almost see the ripple that flew from her before it launched the gunman through the air. He flew twenty meters and would have gone farther if there hadn't been a wall in the way. He crunched and flopped to the ground and I vowed to make sure I didn't piss Lorelei off enough to make her yell at me.

Lorelei looked woozy but remained upright. I ran back towards Severa and put a shoulder under her right arm as she put it over mine. "Got any medi-gel?" I said, not too hopeful. To my relief she nodded. I got her to the corner where the man Severa shot lay in a spreading pool of blood. Lorelei got the medi-gel and administered it as I picked up the dead man's assault rifle. It was a Hahne-Kedar model, one I was intimately familiar with from my days as a Marine. I found a couple of Mark 14 grenades on him as well and scooped them up.

Severa was on her feet, still hurt but no longer bleeding out. The painkillers in the medi-gel were probably helping too, but she still looked rough. "Go on ahead," I said. "I'm going to say hello to the others." She nodded and Lorelei gave her a shoulder, both of them looking ragged.

I waited at the corner for a few seconds. Sure enough the guys from the other end had made it down. The lack of gunfire probably had them convinced it was over. I sent a burst down at them, forcing them to retreat back around the corner and wounding one of them. I took a grenade and popped the fins on it, allowing me to throw it like a discus down the alley and sticking it into the wall. Hearing bad guys yell out "Grenade!" in a panic has always been a favorite sound of mine. I let the fuse run down all ten seconds as I walked backwards, gun up. After the detonation I fired a few rounds then threw the other one.

I turned and ran towards the others. I took back my place as Severa's crutch. As we passed the crumpled body of the one Lorelei threw the turian stopped me. She bent down and looked closely at the man's face. He was human and unfamiliar to me. "Huh," she muttered. "That's Bhati. Son of a bitch. Take a picture of him, Blake." She saw my look as I complied and said, "Later. We need to move." She brushed me off and we left the deserted market. I kept rear guard but didn't see anyone following.

We needed to get someplace safe. I had Lorelei lead us down the least-used paths she could find, keeping us off the main thoroughfares. After about ten minutes I took us down what looked like a little-used maintenance tunnel. We all needed a breather and my neck was getting stiff from being on a swivel. We settled in and I checked my communicator. Things were back to normal. "Comm's back," I told Severa, "want me to call C-Sec or do you want to handle it?"

She stopped probing her wound and looked at me. "Neither. I don't want C-Sec to know yet." I didn't expect that. She looked over at our companion. "Lorelei, right? Those men you were talking to. Are they part of the Serpent?"

The girl nodded, but there was fire in her eyes. "Yes. Look, I don't know what you guys were thinking, but - "

Severa cut her off. "Later. We're not safe here. Those guys are going to want us dead and the deck's stacked against us." Lorelei didn't look like someone who was used to being interrupted, but she swallowed her reasonably justified anger and settled for glaring at me instead.

I could deal with that. "So why aren't we calling C-Sec and getting you some medical attention?"

The turian shook her head. "That guy back there. He was Pratik Bhati. He was with C-Sec. He's one of the agents that disappeared during the investigation."

I whistled. That changed the game. It also made sense of what we walked into. "Let me guess. You got a call this morning when I went to Tranquility and got a lead so you could tail me." She nodded. "And there was a recommendation that you go radio silent to keep your cover." Another nod. "Weaver?"

"Weaver." Her voice was flatter than the back of Pratik Bhati's skull. "He even cut my channel from C-Sec's end to make sure no inadvertent signal gave me away." She shook her head.

" _Bosh'tet._ " My use of the quarian expletive made Severa give me a puzzled look. Explaining that I was halfway through _Pilgrimage to My Heart_ and getting to the good part wouldn't have improved her mood so I just shook my head at her. I thought about what I'd seen back there. "Tell me, did Bhati have background with Alliance military?"

"I'd have to check to be certain. Why?"

I lifted the assault rifle. "Standard Alliance gear. Our attackers were all human. I noticed the ones Lorelei was talking to looked like officers on leave. These guys. I have a hunch they're all ex-Alliance."

She snorted an unfunny laugh. "Like Weaver."

"Figures." I know a lot of folks had left the Alliance around the time I did. With the batarians pulling back and cutting themselves off from the Council web and therefore no real need for military buildups or action, a lot of folks mustered out instead of settling on some backwater colony for guard duty. That meant a whole lot of people trained to fight with nothing to fight against. I could easily think of a few men I'd served with willing to join a gang of like-minded people who didn't care about laws as much as they liked shooting things. There was a disturbing amount of them around.

"The men I was talking to were definitely ex-Alliance," Lorelei said. "You have no idea what - "

"Later," Severa said again. I was happy because now she was the target of the glare. "We need a safe spot. C-Sec is out. So is my quarters." She eyed me. "Yours are being watched, Blake. Lorelei?" The girl thought but shook her head. I figured the Serpent had its eye on her.

"I have an idea." It wasn't a great one, but it was the only one I had.

Severa looked at me like she knew my mind. "OK. No cars. They'll watch the transit systems. We need to keep doing what we're doing."

"It's going to take a while to get there. You going to be ok?"

Her laugh showed off her fangs. "It'll take more than some human to do me in. Let's go."

"One sec, commando." I tried to adjust the brown robe she wore to cover up some of the blue bloodstains. I couldn't do much but it was a bit of an improvement. A casual observer hopefully wouldn't spot it. I collapsed the assault rifle down for transport, took off my pistol, and clipped the bigger gun to my belt in its place. I wanted the big gun in my hands for comfort but wandering around with it drawn would attract too much attention. I held the sidearm out to Lorelei. "Know how to use this?"

She gave me a look I was very familiar with, a mix of disbelief and poorly concealed contempt. It was like looking at my sister. She took it and checked it over before attaching it to her own belt. "You know who my father is." At least she didn't use it on me.

I just nodded instead of responding, not wanting to antagonize her. I occasionally had bouts of self-preservation that way. I also knew I'd just put her in a lot of danger, but I believed we'd make it out OK. After all, I had a hundred thousand reasons to make sure she got home safely.


	8. Chapter 8: Any Port in a Storm

It took us a while to get to where I was taking them. I wanted to stick to alleys and back ways and avoid eyes as much as possible. I also didn't head directly to the destination. Instead we meandered, sometimes doubled back, occasionally stayed put in a hiding spot while Severa got some rest. Lorelei was looking fresher and wanted to talk but the turian wouldn't let her ask questions, always putting her off for later when we weren't being actively hunted. I didn't bring up the fact that we'd be in that situation until we managed to wipe out a large criminal organization that had infiltrated an unknown number of C-Sec operatives. I didn't want to put a damper on anyone's chipper mood.

All in all, it was the most effort I ever put into going to a bar, and that's saying something.

It was the night shift, and Tranquility was as almost as empty as I hoped it would be. There were a couple of tables that had occupants, one with quarians and the other salarians. The krogan Kreeg was the only one at the bar. To say we stood out would be an understatement. I had Severa under one shoulder and an assault rifle in my other hand, and Lorelei still had the pistol out. We made our way to the bar as quickly as I could manage. The turian was only half-conscious and it slowed me down. I was starting to worry I'd taken too long.

Tomyra gave us a quick once-over with her eyes. She didn't look alarmed or surprised. Instead she looked out at the empty sea of tables. "Bar's closed, folks," she said to the half-dozen customers. Her voice could do a good impression of an iron rasp. "Kreeg, show them the door." He got up and used a lot less friendly words and gestures to make the point.

I made it to the bar and leaned Severa against a stool. The turian was unconscious now, but I could see her breathing. "She's C-Sec. She's been shot." I turned to see the salarians protesting their removal but leaving nonetheless. Bars didn't close on the Citadel, almost nothing did, but arguing with a krogan about it wasn't a viable long-term strategy.

Tomyra gave me a look like I was a preaching hanar, mostly contempt and disgust but with a pinch of derision to spice things up. "No shit." She vaulted over the bar with a grace that took my mind off the trigger-happy gang that wanted me dead. She started checking Severa's wound. "You think C-Sec could plant a cop in my bar without me knowing? Oh, nevermind, of course you do. You're human." She finished her examination. "Bring her around the bar. There's a room in the back."

I eased Severa back onto my shoulder and got her upright. She muttered a few things that I couldn't hear but probably weren't complimentary. I started the slow shuffle with Lorelei behind me as Tomyra used her omni-tool to shut the doors. The opening was wide and it took a few seconds to close them off. In the meantime I was half-dragging Severa around the long bar until Lorelei put my pistol on the bar and threw the turian's other arm over her shoulders and gave me a hand.

We got her back into a small room, sparse, with a cot and a couple of lockers and a magazine or two. We got Severa muscled up onto the bed while the asari tapped a code on one of the lockers. She got some medi-gel out and went to work, using her omni-tool to administer it. I stepped back to give Tomyra room since she looked like she knew what she was doing. I dropped the assault rifle on a small table and flexed my hand. I'd been death-gripping it for a while.

After a couple minutes Severa was breathing easier, and so was I. The bartender stopped fiddling with her omni-tool and looked over at me. "She'll be fine. She's sleeping now, instead of unconscious."

I raised an eyebrow. "There's a difference?"

Like most people, she ignored me. "You," she said, pointing a finger that looked weaponized at Lorelei , "stay here and keep an eye on her while I have a chat with him." The thumb she sent my way was even more threatening. I heard Lorelei start a protest as the door slid shut behind us. To my eternal surprise and gratitude Tomyra slid me an Earth scotch as I sat at the bar with the krogan. "Spill it," she said, and I was too scared of her to ask if she meant my drink.

"After you threw me out last night," I paused as I looked for sympathy and got none and moved on, "I got picked up by Severa for a chat at C-Sec. They're concerned my investigation would interfere with a sand operation they're running. Her partner, Weaver, was there. Know him?" She nodded. "I ignored Severa's advice and listened to yours. I showed up this morning and talked to Merrin. Weaver was there. Your bartender sent me to the black market and Weaver got a tail put on me."

I knocked back half my drink. It burned and I knew it would do a number on my empty gut. "I slipped the first bunch but Severa picked me up. I got to the market and spotted her, plus the tail Weaver had put on _her_. I found the girl," I jerked my thumb helpfully to the back, mostly for the krogan's benefit, "and let Severa know she was in trouble. Got into a firefight with some humans, military-grade gear. Turns out one of them was a C-Sec officer that went missing as part of this sand investigation. Severa got hit in the firefight and we came here. The long way. Figured everything else was watched."

I slugged back the rest of my drink and waited for her response. Instead her omni-tool chirped. The asari narrowed her eyes at me and tapped a hologrammatic button. A voice sounded from it. "Tomyra Dalius. This is C-Sec requesting access to the bar Tranquility as part of an ongoing investigation. If you do not comply within thirty seconds, we will override the locks and enter the bar. We would rather not do that."

I figured thirty seconds were twenty-nine more than Tomyra needed to kill me, but to my surprise she didn't. "Guess we were being watched, too," she said simply, glancing at Kreeg. She looked back at me. "Want to hide with the others, see if I can run them off?"

I thought for a second and shook my head. I figured we'd get found anyway, and I didn't think they'd have anything to book me on anyway. The asari poured me another drink and made sure she and the krogan had a fresh one as well before she tapped her fingers on her omni-tool. I leaned back in the stool and gave an air of exaggerated relaxation I didn't feel as the doors slid open.

In walked a troop of half a dozen gun-toting folks in blue light armor. I breathed a little easier when I saw that half of them were turians, but it's hard for me to relax too much when that many guys with guns are walking toward me. I'd never seen this many C-Sec types in one place outside of their offices. They definitely never needed more than two to deal with me. I didn't recognize any of them, but I didn't make knowing cops a priority. The introductions usually came without me seeking them out.

Tomyra spoke up. "Is there something I can do for you, Officer…?" The pause made it clear that she was fishing for a name. That made my unease ratchet up a little higher. I was new to this area and not knowing everyone was expected. An asari bartender not knowing a C-Sec officer in her stomping grounds was a little different. It took everything I had to not glance at my pistol, sitting six feet to my left right on the bar.

The troop stopped about twenty feet away from us. Three assault rifle barrels were pointed at me. The other three were pointing at the ground, for now. The guy in charge was human, crewcut, with a mouth as sour as volus wine. He skipped the introductions. "Why is this bar closed?"

"Private party. Rented out."

"Yeah? Party's over." He jerked his head at Kreeg. "You're free to go, krogan."

"Best thing I've heard all night." The big scarred brute sucked down the rest of his drink, eased off the stool, and sauntered past them. No one put their guns on him, but I could tell they wanted to. They were that smart, at least. Pointing a gun at a krogan is a bad idea unless you're already squeezing the trigger.

"We're looking for a pair of fugitives involved in the murder of a C-Sec officer earlier today. This man," his lazily swung weapon made it a fourth barrel pointing my way, "is one of those suspects. We have reason to believe the other is here. If you cooperate, this'll be over in no more than a minute. Your call."

"By all means," she said, and the sweat that was trickling down my back became a river. "The rest of the party is in the back."

Crewcut looked back at one of the guys behind him, another human, and jerked his head towards the back. Without a word two of the turians followed as Number Two started moving around the bar. Things looked bleak, but at least I was down to two guns pointed at me. Ma always taught me to look on the bright side.

They were rounding the bar, about fifteen feet away from my only gun, when Tomyra spoke up. "Hey, Gallian," she said conversationally. The turian next to the boss glanced over at her. "I heard you were still with the Darkstar mercs. If you walk out now I'll make sure Saber doesn't hear about this."

Everybody froze. I felt my heart thump in my chest hard. Once. Twice.

On the third, everything exploded.


	9. Chapter 9: Duck and Cover

The fake C-Sec officers snapped up their guns and sighted us down in a figurative explosion of movement. The literal explosion happened at the end of the bar, where the three going to the back were standing. It sounded like a grenade, so I assumed it was. My estimation of Tomyra's paranoia level deepened, along with my respect and fear. It made me wonder where else she had explosive devices planted for just-in-case purposes. It also helped explain how she might be on a first name basis with murderous mercenaries.

Unfortunately for me she didn't have any planted under the other trio. What she did have was her biotics, and for the second time that day someone was kind enough to put a kinetic barrier between me and the slivers of metal that wanted to rip me apart. I didn't figure it would last long under the heavy assault rifle fire so I lunged over to my left, grabbed my pistol off the counter, and flopped over the bar with the grace and style of a boat-bottom fish. Bars on the Citadel were built like bunkers and I counted on it to save my hide after Tomyra's barrier fell.

The asari was already crouched behind it as I floundered back to my feet. She reached past some glasses and pulled a slick-looking assault rifle out from under the bar. I figured it was an asari special, one of those weapons that didn't see wide use among the rest of us slobs. I could hear it charge up with an electric hum as she popped up and sent three zapping shots back at our attackers. The crackle and pop of frying shields was audible, so I stuck my head and arms over the bartop and sent a few rounds downrange. I aimed for the guy looking for cover and was rewarded by the sight of armor fragmenting and blood flying. I started feeling hopeful, since if Tomyra could bring down their shields my heavy pistol could punch through their armor, especially at this close range.

Then the barrier dropped and so did my courage. I dropped to a squat as glass shattered above and behind me. I shifted closer to Tomyra, who was also using the bar for cover but looking more like a spider waiting in ambush compared to my look of huddled distress. Our opponents were professional, keeping a constant spray of fire on us to keep us pinned. I knew before long that they'd use the covering fire to outflank us. I moved past the asari, heading towards the far end of the bar opposite the grenade-planted one. I heard the clearly fearless bartender snap off a few rounds despite the fire and shook my head. Even I didn't know if it was from admiration or disbelief.

I got to the end of the bar and looked around the corner. No one was in sight so I edged around to the short side of the bar and poked my head out for a second. I wasn't surprised to see one of the goons, the guy I'd wounded, crouched against the bar and making his way towards my position. If I hadn't gotten there first he'd have flanked us. I swung my pistol out and hammered shot after shot into him. His shields had started to recover, but at this range they couldn't do much. The heavy rounds slammed into him and before he could get his rifle on me I dropped him.

Before I could feel too proud of myself I saw movement at the other end of the bar. The grenade hadn't taken care of all three of them. It looked like only one of them was staying down and the others were getting back to their feet. I fired a couple rounds their way without much luck and called out a warning to Tomyra. That caused the turian, Gallian, to turn to me and start pouring rounds my way.

He was behind an overturned table while the spokesperson of the group kept suppressing fire on the bar a few steps ahead of the turian. In short order, Tomyra was forced to stay down, firing at the far end to keep my opposite bookend from filling the area behind the bar with flying metal. They still had the numbers, even with two down, and if they were patient they'd get us eventually. Every time I stuck my head out Gallian would fire. I knew he was trying to bait me out, but if I didn't do something soon we were done.

I could hear movement as the two free thugs moved their positions, but the turian kept me from finding out where they'd moved to. I was contemplating a foolish dash out to the tables, hoping to tip one over and get into cover, when I felt the floor under me vibrate. It was brief, then repeated, over and over in a rhythm. I had a gut feeling about the source, and I chanced Gallian's rifle fire to see if I was right.

The turian fired, but not at me. The mini-earthquake I felt was Kreeg running right at the suddenly panicky Gallian. A couple shots hit the krogan's armor but he ignored them. One of Kreeg's hands slammed up into the turian's crotch and the other grabbed him by the face. The big krogan didn't stop charging through the tables, using poor Gallian as both battering ram and shield. The head of the gang that had talked so tough got slammed into the bar. He and the turian became the inside of a bar-and-krogan sandwich, and neither one was getting up.

The last two mugs standing, both turian, started the spray-and-pray routine, trying to take us all out or at least keep us pinned while they ran for it. The fire was enough to make Kreeg go for cover and kept Tomyra's head down. I popped a few rounds off but didn't do much. The turians started pulling back, going from cover while the other used suppressing fire. I've always hated people who knew what they were doing. The krogan had a shotgun out and fired a few rounds, but the turians were using cover to well for us to get to them.

The distinctive clatter of a Lancer assault rifle came from my left, and I looked over to see Lorelei leaning out from the back, peppering the turians with accurate bursts from the side. Their last shot at retreating ended when Tomyra used her omni to close the doors again. Kreeg's big shotgun boomed and sent one sprawling and that was that. The last guy dropped to his face with his arms up. I was tempted to finish him. Getting shot at makes me touchy.

We regrouped and checked to make sure everyone was OK. Kreeg had taken a few rounds but his hide was probably tougher than the scarred old armor he wore. I thanked the krogan and Tomyra but they shrugged it off. All the asari said was, "No one threatens me in my bar, but especially not any half-assed mercs with delusions of grandeur." Kreeg just grunted and started separating the living from the dead. Tomyra started eying the breathing ones like she was shopping for a new coat. I guessed she had some questions she wanted to torture someone with.

I was ready to chase down another whiskey but Lorelei wasn't as kind as the other two. She started in on me. "All right," she said, sounding like my last landlord on rent day. The assault rifle the girl was pointing at me was even the same model. Lorelei interrupted my stroll down memory alley before it got good. "Give me three good reasons why I shouldn't shoot you now."

I couldn't help but ask, even though her look told me she meant exactly what she said. "Why not just one?"

I could see her finger tighten on the trigger. "Because, first, you dragged me into an ambush. Second, you work for my father. Third, you ruined the best chance I had to help a friend."

"Fair." It was. I fished out a cigarette and stuck it in my mouth. "One. I can help you find Cole." I flicked my lighter and puffed smoke. "Two. I can help C-Sec shut these dusters down." I took a long drag and looked her in the eye. "And three." I exhaled a long stream of smoke up in the air and fixed her with my most charming grin. Unfortunately, my delaying tactics hadn't helped me think of a third reason. My grin gradually curdled at the edges as she stared down the length of the rifle at me.

Lorelei got an even harder look in her eye. "Not good enough, old man." Ahh, the young. "If I believed you could pull off the other two, I'd be tempted to let you live. Sorry."

I didn't have an answer, but I managed to stay steady and take another drag. Luckily for me an answer came all the same. "With my help, he can." Her voice was rough - well, rougher - and she had to lean against the wall for support, but Severa looked better than she had when we got here. The firefight must've woken her.

It took a couple minutes but we got her in a seat and a drink in her hand. Lorelei left the gun on the bar and gave the turian some time to elaborate. After a couple of pulls of some nasty-smelling brew I decided to find out for myself. "Thought you said C-Sec was a no-go." When I told Lorelei I could get their help I'd been running a straight bluff.

Severa coughed a little, but I think it had more to do with her drink. "Still is. Mostly. Have an idea, though. There's a guy I think we can trust. If we play it right."

"When do you want to give him a call?"

She bared her fangs at me in a more or less friendly way. "I'm not. You are."

I laughed and took a big gulp of my own drink. "You're funny. I think C-Sec is the last place I should be around."

"Don't worry. You won't get near the place. I'll give you his direct com line. You'll tell him that you have a lead on the Matriarch Enallia case and you want to meet at the noodle place near the STG hideout. He'll know what you mean."

I stubbed out my smoke. "Glad someone does, because none of that means a thing to me."

"It will to him. I'll tell you where to go. Sit in the back corner and he'll find you. Tell him everything. He'll keep it close, but he'll be able to get C-Sec to help."

I finished my drink and pondered. "That's nice. Still have a problem though." I lit another cigarette. It'd been that kind of day. "We don't know where the Serpent is holed up."

The asari cut in. "Leave that part to me." She was walking towards the back. Kreeg had an unconscious human on each shoulder and was right behind her. "It shouldn't take long."

"Might be tougher than you think," I said. "These guys are former Alliance military. They're trained to deal with interrogation."

Tomyra stopped, then turned to me slowly. I felt small all of a sudden. "Yeah?" She gave me a look, the second or third most contemptuous one I'd gotten from her so far. "You know, I've learned a few things myself in the last six or seven hundred years. Maybe I'll just go ahead and give it a shot." She turned and went into the back. Kreeg's grin at me as he followed behind was the cherry on my day.

At least I had an entire bar in front of me to improve my outlook.


	10. Chapter 10: An Overdue Conversation

The universe had other plans for me besides a stiff drink or seven. It always did. "Before you pickle yourself," Severa said, "I need you to ring my contact. You'll want to be sober for the meeting."

I grabbed some filtered Earth water instead with a scowl. The label made it look like Earth was a pastoral wonderland and the water therein was hand-filtered by nymphs. I grew up there and knew it probably came out of a rusty spigot in some filthy bottling plant. I drank it anyway in a misguided show of solidarity for my species. "What's the name?"

"Don't worry about that," she responded, clicking on her omni. Mine buzzed silently as she sent me a message. Just a number with no information. "You have encryption on your piece of terracrap?" She was recovering quickly.

I figured Madeleine had set me up with some. A quick check verified it. I made the call with no video. A brusque voice answered without identifying itself. He sounded turian, which didn't surprise me. I gave the spiel Severa told me to say and he stayed quiet throughout my performance. All he said was, "One hour," and cut the line. All in all, it was as heartwarming as most exchanges between our species.

I told Severa what he said and she nodded. I looked over at Lorelei and she was standing closer to the assault rifle than I liked. She was looking at me like a volus banker eyeing a krogan in his queue. I think she suspected my statement about finding Cole was something to save my face from being shot. She was right, but I felt like I'd need to follow up before she picked up a firearm again. "OK, Lorelei," I said, "the C-Sec angle is shaping up. I said I'd help find your friend. What can you tell me?"

She kept looking at me hard. The fire in her eyes was having an effect on me, but I didn't think it was the one she'd intended. I always did seem to be attracted to the ones that could hurt me the most. Physically and emotionally. Finally she spoke, just before my knees could buckle. "What do you want to know?"

She really didn't like me at all. "Know where he is?" I didn't have much hope, but I had to try.

Females of every species seemed to learn young just how much contempt they could put into a head tilt. "Your little show stopped me from finding out."

I knew I needed to tread lightly. "Fair enough. What do they want from you?"

It was clear she didn't expect the question. She probably figured I'd be looking for information about her friend, not her. She stopped looking at me. Her eyes danced around a bit. It took a second or two before her eyes came back to mine. "They… wanted my help. To convince Cole to help them."

"Why you?" Her face went a little red. I'd gotten lucky and knocked her off-balance. She didn't answer right away so I kept at it. "They hoping his girlfriend could put a little pressure on him? What kind of help is a rising star in the Alliance Navy going to provide with a bunch of drug runners? Or is he already a dealer and they need his help to expand?"

She got redder and she snapped at me. "It's not like that." She took a couple of rapid breaths and looked down. "Well, not exactly." She sounded a little calmer. "Look, Cole and I… we're close. We basically grew up together. As we got older, he wanted a little more than I did. A relationship." I lit a smoke and she gestured at me for one. I handed it over and lit it for her and she went on, talking more to the bar than me. "He was like a brother to me. He didn't take it well, but things got better after a while."

Lorelei started drawing little patterns on the bar with her finger. "Then after he graduated, he came home. My father was busy with his shipping company so Cole and I got to catch up. He seemed off. A little too excited. I didn't think it was just excitement for starting at the Academy. He was just… off." She took a long drag and held it for a bit. "One day he asked about us again. He said he understood me better now. I didn't know what he meant. He smiled and pointed at a vase of flowers on the table. One of them lifted up and floated over to us. It didn't make it. That was when I knew he was using sand."

She stubbed out her cigarette on the bar and left it. I used a towel to clean it up before Tomyra showed back up as Lorelei went on. I didn't want the asari to toss her across the room. "He started dusting because he thought it'd bring us closer. He wanted me to try some of the other stuff he brought, the Minagen. He said that it'd make me even stronger and that I'd feel like a goddess." Her face clouded and I could see she'd make one hell of an angry one. "I laid into him. I was furious. He was a damn junkie and he wanted me to be one with him. He begged me not to tell my father, as if he were even around to have a conversation. Cole and I didn't speak for days."

I handed her a water and she nodded a thank you. "Cole finally found me and apologized. He was broken up and looked scared. He was babbling about how he didn't mean it and how sorry he was for things getting this way. Then he spilled it all. He'd gotten hooked on the stuff his last semester. Then he started helping his classmates get it. Small-time stuff, you know, but dealing all the same. Lucky for him it didn't mess with his performance at school. Or maybe it was unlucky, because none of us would be here now."

Lorelei got quiet. I lit her another cigarette and she took it. I didn't want to interrupt her flow so I kept my mouth shut. I can manage that from time to time. Severa kept quiet, too. I imagine she was used to confessions and knew when to back off. The young lady took a few drags, looking off. Her face was a blend of anger and regret and melancholy.

After a minute she shook her head. "He was in bad shape. He was trying to stop using. Doing it for me, is how he put it. He was full of remorse and self-pity. Then I found out why he was so scared. The people who'd gotten him the stuff were putting the screws to him. They knew my father and his cargo transports. They were telling Cole that unless he helped them get their stuff on my father's ships then his career aspirations were over. Done. They had a plan, a cover company. They wanted Cole to sell my father on it, since if he approved it then the normal vetting wouldn't happen. He wanted me to help him. He wanted me to help convince my father to use his company to ship this shit all over the galaxy."

The anger was back, with a vengeance. "He put me in that position. After all my father did for him. I lost my temper. Things flew around the room. I didn't hurt him, but I wanted to. He ran out. I let him go because I didn't know what I'd do to him. I felt betrayed. No, I _was_ betrayed." Lorelei finished the cigarette in three quick drags then stubbed it out in the ash tray I just managed to put in her path. She took breather to calm down again. "I went looking for him a few hours later. He was a wreck. It was like someone had stolen the person I knew and replaced him with a shell. I talked him down. He wanted to tell the dealers he was out. In person. He was due to meet them anyway. I told him I'd go with him. I thought that maybe I'd be able to convince them to leave us alone."

She waved off my offer of another cigarette. "Cole didn't want me to, but I told him he'd never get off-planet unless he agreed to let me come. He gave in. I wanted to help him. He's smart. He's capable. He has such a bright future. I wanted to help him get back on track. He's family." She laughed to herself for a second, the rueful kind I was well acquainted with. "Then he slipped out the first night we were here. I used my connections to get some fake documents, a new look, and untraceable credits, and tried to track him down."

That one got the better of me. "Those are some connections. I'd have a little trouble scoring that, and I've been around. Where'd an admiral's daughter make those kind of friends?"

The look she gave me showed her harder edges. "I'm very active, politically. Some organizations are a little underground. Not because they're bad, but because their causes are unpopular with some very powerful people. Like my father. Groups like Terra Firma give my friends a hard way to go. And," she paused to grab another cigarette from me, "what they do isn't always strictly legal. They help refugees get through the Citadel protocols to get to safety. They bend the law for the right reasons. They helped me, because I'm helping them."

I could see why they helped her. She had the pedigree and presence to be a real ally to their cause. "So that's how you went off-grid," I said. "How'd you end up in the black market?"

She smiled without much humor. "When Cole was babbling after I'd scared him, he let slip a name. Someone from his school. I contacted him anonymously and put the screws to him. That got me another name. I worked my way up until I got someone who agreed to meet with me in the black market." So she'd never been here, and the bartender had set me up. I looked forward to chatting with him. She took a deep drag and gave me a bad look. "That's when you showed up. I was arranging a meeting with their boss. They were amenable to talking and were going to let me see Cole. They didn't want my father's resources coming after them."

I shook off her look. "I don't think things were going that way. No offense."

Her voice had so much venom I started to worry about an antidote. "You messed everything up. You destroyed the chance I had to get Cole out of this. You almost got me killed and I have to save your ass on top of everything." The fire in her eyes wasn't nearly as alluring as before. "You're a complete idiot, so forgive me if I think you have exactly no chance of helping me at all." Her hand began reaching for the rifle next to her.

My mouth moved a bit as different arguments that wouldn't get me shot failed to appear on my lips. Luckily someone else had one. "He's an idiot," Severa said, "that much is true. But," the turian said, feeling nothing of the glare Lorelei now directed at her, "he did save your life. Despite the terrible plan and botched execution."

"Spare me," Lorelei said, her words spat out like a human tasting turian food. "They wouldn't do a damn thing to me. They know who my father is."

Severa stood up and leaned an elbow on the bar. "I'm sure they did," she said. "But he doesn't know who they are. Believe me, I know their type. I've fished enough bodies out of alleys and reclamation vats, kids of diplomats or politicians from the Presidium, all who thought their names were their armor. It doesn't mean a damn thing down here." The turian was matter-of-fact. "They would have gotten you alone, and you would have died, and if you were lucky, some C-Sec patrol would find you before the Keepers took your body for disposal. And you'd have been one more rich kid who died in the Wards, and no one would know who did it."

That quieted Lorelei down some. Her anger was gone. I wanted to keep it away. "We'll get Cole. You have my word." That came out before my brain knew what the rest of me was promising. I regretted it immediately. "Did they give you any indication where the meet-up was supposed to be?"

Lorelei shook her head. "I was supposed to follow them as they escorted me." Her voice sounded flat. I figured she was thinking for the first time how that little walk would have ended.

I scrubbed my face with my hand. "Severa, there anything you aren't telling us? Without a location, we're at square one."

It wasn't Severa who answered. "Deravam Medical Supply warehouse." The three of us turned. Tomyra was wiping off her hands as Kreeg carried the bodies out from the back. They hung limply down from the krogan's shoulders and looked a little stretched to me, like their arms and legs had gone through a growth spurt. I didn't want to know. The asari saw us looking at her funny. She shrugged. "You wanted a location. You got it." She looked at me. "Don't you have a meeting to go to? I want to get this show on the road."

She started checking over her gun as Kreeg rifled the bodies, sticking credit chits in his pockets. I raised my best eyebrow. "You're coming?"

Tomyra didn't look up from her rifle. "No one comes into my bar and threatens me."

I left it at that. I pulled my collar up to hide my face as best I could and headed out. The prospect of breaking into a gang hideout filled with military types suddenly seemed a little more survivable.


	11. Chapter 11: Lunch with a Cop

I tried to be as casual as possible leaving the bar through the back door. I'm sure I failed miserably. Something about being out in the open when I knew a group of heavily-armed ex-military types were looking specifically for me and had already marked the place I was leaving had my usual equanimity buried under a thick layer of well-earned paranoia. The noodle place Severa was sending me wasn't far but it wasn't close either. I would have felt less naked in a skinsuit on stage working for tips. I didn't want to risk the transit service but walking all the way to the meet-up in the open had my nerves on fire. I didn't make it a tenth of the way before I headed towards the skycar traffic. I decided I'd rather get shot at the depot and get it over with instead of spending an entire three-kilometer walk waiting for the bullet.

I did the usual stuff, doubling back, ducking into shops, that sort of thing. I might have been willing to get it over with, but I didn't plan on making their job too easy. I made my way to a shuttle depot that wasn't the closest one to Tranquility and hoped for the best. I got in visual range of it and watched it for a bit, looking for anyone that was doing what I was doing, standing in one spot looking around. I was glad I wasn't nearer the tourist areas, since that was all anyone around there did. I gave it a few minutes. I saw plenty of suspicious characters but didn't see anyone that looked like they were there specifically to kill me.

Walking casually over to the shuttle was hard. I calmed myself by picturing how broken up Madeleine would be at my funeral. Since my imagination couldn't conjure up the image of her looking guilty or contrite or weeping inconsolably I had to work real hard at it. That kept my mind occupied as I approached the kiosk and requested an aircar. Since it could take a few minutes for one to show I sought whatever cover I could. Unfortunately, the only concealment was offered by an advertisement column, which kept exhorting me by name to purchase one of a dozen different products or services that I either couldn't afford or would be too embarrassed to use in public.

It was just my luck that my skycab showed up just as the ad started on a pre-order pitch for _Migration to Desire_. It wasn't due out for a couple of months so I had to keep my excitement damped down. I didn't even get to see the full preview before I had to climb into the driver's seat. The clamshell top closed in on me and I felt a little safer. I tapped the haptic keys and pulled out, darkening the windows as I went. It took a few minutes for my nerves to drop from full jangle. I kept looking for a gunship to appear behind me but there was nothing but the constant stream of vehicles buzzing around.

I was glad to park the thing and climb out. Even for short distances Citadel traffic made potential assassins look appealing. Since I'd traveled closer to the Presidium the area was a little nicer, but was still definitely in the Wards. I blended in with the crowd, or tried to, and checked my omni to make sure I was heading in the right direction. I was early, but made my way into the restaurant anyway. It was little more than a kiosk with seating, but the food smelled good and the tables in the back were secluded. I hadn't been hungry when I walked in but the aroma got to me.

One of the things humans brought to galactic civilization was the wonder and delight of the perfect noodle. They were surprisingly popular, since it turned out to be easily adapted to the dextro-protein races like the turians and quarians. Walking into the place reminded me of some of the dives back in Las Angela-Vegas, the ones that looked like shelters and had the best grub. It was human-run, and in a couple minutes I had a big pile of steaming goodness in some kind of brown sauce with unidentifiable meat and too many vegetables. It was perfection. I hunkered over it in the back corner booth Severa had specified. It was the best I'd felt all day.

Of course it didn't last. I only managed a couple of bites when the turian sat across from me. His blue uniform had the marks identifying him a C-Sec investigator and matched the coloring on his face. I was early but he'd clearly been here even earlier, scoping out the place before I showed. I didn't bother wondering how he knew it was me who'd contacted him. He looked as friendly as a rachni and turned out to be almost as charming. "Tell me what this is about and where she is, or you'll beg me to let the Keepers recycle you."

I did my best put-upon sigh, and since I had a lot of practice it was pretty good. I gave him the story, leaving out Madeleine and the background details. He wouldn't have cared about the human angle anyway. I told him all about Severa and Weaver and what had happened, and that we had information of the location of where the bad guys were holed up. It took a bit and my noodles got cold. I finished talking and waited while he digested what I'd told him. The food was damn tasty cold too, and since he didn't bother giving me his name I didn't feel the need to be too polite. I slurped them up as he tapped his talons on the table.

It took a couple of minutes. "Officially, there's nothing I can do," he said. "It's out of my jurisdiction and belongs to Internal Affairs." His sneer made me like him a little. "According to the regulations." He said _regulations_ like I said _vegans_. My esteem for him went up. His talons danced a little more as he thought. "However, I have a current investigation that may require a trip down that way. I'll pick up Weaver and have a chat. Take a ride down to the warehouse. If there's a disturbance there I'll have to call it in to the locals. Provided it's big enough." He leaned in and looked at me hard. "It will be big enough, right?"

I nodded. "I can guarantee it." With Tomyra involved, I had no doubt. I had a feeling the explosives in the bar weren't the only ones she had lying around.

The turian nodded and stood. "Ping me when you get ready to move. It'll take a little bit of time for C-Sec to show in force. Remember that." He walked off without asking me to be careful. I felt hurt. I consoled myself with noodles and headed back. I decided to walk this time, since I wanted time to think. I was careful and took my time as I made the long walk, but I didn't feel as nervous this time. It was probably a mistake, but I needed to let my mind work.

I was starting to get a pretty good feel for the game the Serpent were playing. The way I figured it, a core group got the idea and put it into action, small at first, then expanding as they went. The core probably all served together, trusted each other more than they cared about the Alliance or galactic law. Since the pay was crap they probably figured they were owed some compensation for their service. For a group of well-trained and physically augmented ex-soldiers, muscling in on a couple of gangs and taking over distribution was probably a snap. Over time, they probably recruited a few more ex-buddies as needed.

At least, I assumed they had to be getting big if they were looking for a hold on old Admiral York's fleet connections. It made sense though, and a little extranet browsing confirmed it. The old man's ships did most of their trade to planets and stations with a significant military presence. A few well-compensated folks on the inside of those places would make sure the shipments made it in just fine. The only problem would be getting them on board. The way Madeleine made it sound, Cole Montgomery was the apple of the Admiral's one good eye. No surprise there. It's easy when someone gets older to see themselves in a young person they admire. Makes their youth seem even better than they remember.

Since I didn't have better intel, I had to go with my gut. I assumed the core group would be ex-officers and non-comms, like the pair I saw in the black market, with a bunch of grunts doing the heavy lifting. That would be a buzzsaw to run through to get the kid, and it would be so loud and obvious that the kid would either be dead or taken away by the time I reached him. With a heavy heart, I threw out the notion of a glorious suicidal charge into the teeth of the enemy and decided to come up with something with a little more nuance.

By the time I got back to Tranquility, I had a couple of good ideas propped up with a few terrible ones. And a grin.


End file.
